Francisco Llorens Díaz
1874–1948 · Galician painter of landscapes and still lifes
Francisco Llorens Díaz (La Coruña, 1874 - Madrid, 1948) was a Spanish-Galician painter, best known for his landscapes and still lifes, and he also worked as a portraitist. He trained with Carlos de Haes in Madrid and completed his education in the workshops of Joaquín Sorolla, placing his work within early twentieth-century Spanish painting.
With a grant from the Spanish Academy in Rome, he travelled through Belgium and the Netherlands with fellow students. Several months of intense work in Bruges left a deep impression on him. Three paintings he made in Rome were bought by the Spanish ambassador for the Quirinal Palace. He returned to Spain in 1906.
Over the following two decades he exhibited in Madrid, Barcelona, Panama and Buenos Aires, although he never visited America. In 1929 he was commissioned to organize the Galician pavilion at the Ibero-American Exposition in Seville. After the Spanish Civil War, having fled to Valencia, he focused mainly on still lifes, and later divided his time between Madrid and his Galician landscapes. His health declined from 1945, and he died in Madrid in 1948.
Today his works are held in Galician museums, and the Museo del Prado owns eight of his paintings. A major retrospective was staged in Madrid in 1972.