Conciencia tranquila (Conscience at Ease)

Two years after the Museo de Arte Moderno acquired his painting ¡Mira qué bonita era! (Look How Lovely She Was!, 1895), Julio Romero de Torres applied for a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome. The jury proposed “The Anarchist and His Family” as the theme for that year’s competition, chiming with the era’s interest in social painting. The artist from Córdoba submitted Conciencia tranquila (Conscience at Ease), which depicts an anarchist worker with his hands tied while a judge searches his home. His wife, in the background, holds the youngest of their children and her head in her hands in despair, while the eldest son clings to his father’s shirt with a look of fear. These gestures bestow the work with a sense of defeat, although the protagonist looks calm, facing the consequences of his commitment to the workers’ struggle.
The other works presented in the competition, by artists such as Eduardo Chicharro, Manuel Benedito and Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor, focused on the drama for the family in these situations; Romero de Torres, meanwhile, on an unusually monumental scale, sought to represent his central figure with dignity, showing solidarity and empathy with the anarchist working class. The work would not earn him the scholarship in Rome, but it did win the third medal at the National Exhibition of 1899.

Raúl Martínez Arranz