View of Toledo

The old city of Toledo stretches across the far horizon in this 1900 painting by Aureliano de Beruete, its towers and rooftops catching the pale light of a Castilian afternoon. Below the city, dry hills roll toward the viewer, dotted with rocks and patches of golden brown grass. A twisted tree bends across the middle of the scene, its green leaves the freshest note of color in an otherwise sun bleached landscape. The brushwork is quick and loose, which gives the whole picture the feeling of something painted quickly outdoors, before the light could shift.

Beruete came to art by an unusual road. He first trained as a lawyer and worked in politics before turning fully to painting, and he went on to become one of Spain's finest landscape artists. He was a good friend of Joaquín Sorolla, and the two shared a fascination with natural light and open air work in a style shaped by Impressionism. Toledo drew him back time and again, the same city that El Greco had painted centuries before him.

Rather than reaching for drama, this painting offers something plainer and more sincere. A stretch of quiet countryside, an ancient city glowing in the distance, and the ordinary changing light of a Spanish day are all Beruete needed. That honesty is exactly what makes it worth lingering over.