Nicolás Alfaro Brieva

He received his first lessons from Lorenzo Pastor y Castro and took part from an early age in the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Fine Arts Society, founded in 1846. There he taught painting and music, and later developed extensive teaching work at the Academy of Fine Arts during its first period, from 1850 to 1869.

He broadened his landscape training at Madrid's Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando with Jenaro Pérez Villaamil and Carlos de Haes. His painting combines a Romantic perception of nature with more attentive study of realist landscape; he worked mainly in oil and watercolour without abandoning portraiture, genre painting and some religious and theatrical decoration.

In 1874 he moved to Barcelona and came into contact with the landscape milieu of Olot. Although he continued to send works to Canarian competitions, his painting incorporated Catalan landscapes and a new arrangement of rural figures. His teaching in Tenerife was decisive for later artists, and an important part of his work is preserved at the Municipal Fine Arts Museum of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.