Diaz de la Peña

Diaz de la Peña, NARCISSO VIRGILIO, painter, was born at Bordeaux in 1807, of Spanish parentage, and, left an orphan at the age of ten, was educated by a Protestant clergyman at Bellevue, where a snake-bite occasioned the amputation of a leg. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to a porcelain-painter, but he was ambitious of working in oils, and about 1831 began to exhibit in the Salon. Abandoning his unsuccessful efforts in the direction of history and genre, he in time won fame by his landscapes, which he peopled with nymphs, loves, and satyrs. These figures are badly drawn, but as a colourist Diaz ranks highly among the painters of the Romantic school in France, and to colour he was content frankly to sacrifice form. He was also an exquisite painter of flower-pieces. He died at Mentone, 18th November 1876.