The online collection and picture sale

• The Portrait of Sinforosa Jado la Llana is striking not only for being so finely painted (produced when the artist was at the height of his powers), but also for the sitter's really quite unusually strong masculine features. There is another, smaller version of the portrait in the Museum collection, dated 1869, which forms a pair with the one, also a bust, of the same size and by the same artist, of Agustín Obieta, a Bilbao doctor and politician who was a genuine institution of his time, and whom Sinforosa Jado married in 1842. This pretty much resolves the identity of the sitter here, while alerting us to the fact that her two portraits are posthumous, as Sinforosa died in 1868. She was also the aunt of Laureano Jado, who donated this portrait, along with many other paintings, to the Museum. To this day, Laureano Jado remains one of the most important contributors to the Museum's art collection. (Mikel Lertxundi)

Selected bibliography

• Lasterra, Crisanto de. Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao : catálogo descriptivo : sección de arte antiguo. Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 1969. p. 11, n° cat. 23. (Con el título Retrato de señora, y atribuido a BARROETA, Juan de).
• Larrínaga Bernárdez, José Antonio. Juan Barroeta Anguisolea, 1835-1906 : retratista de Bilbao del siglo XIX. Bilbao, José Antonio Larrínaga Bernárdez, 2005. p. 132, n° cat. 27.
• Guía Artistas Vascos. Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2008. pp. 22.
• Gida Euskal Artistak. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Eder Museoa, 2008. p. 22.
• De Goya a Gauguin : el siglo XIX en el Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2008. pp. 243-246, n° cat. 39.
• Guide Basque Artists. Bilbao, Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, 2012. p. 22, n° cat. 7a.