Cecilio Plá y Gallardo and Honeymoon

'Honeymoon' (1900) by Cecilio Plá y Gallardo; Private Collection

I really like this painting! The minute I saw it I knew I would select it for today's post. The Spanish painter Cecilio Plá is an artist I have never heard of. Wikipedia has a Spanish page on him, the English one doesn't carry much information other than his dates of birth and death (November 22, 1860 - August 4, 1934). He studied at the Academia de San Carlos in Valencia and the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid. He became a friend of Joaquín Sorolla, a fellow artist from Valencia (I will do a post on him on the 10th of August) who became his friend. They both had studied under Emilio Sala. When Plá was 20 years old, he went to Rome and travelled through the rest of Italy, France and Portugal. From Italy he sent paintings to be exhibited at Exposiciones Nacionales de Bellas Artes in his home country. He received numerous awards. His work is characterised by grace and elegance. I could not really find any more information on today's painting, even struggled with finding its location and year. I really like this painting because it tells a story. It seems rather sad. You can interpret it yourself because I don't know the background story.