Biography

Spanish painter. He may have been the son of a Valencian sculptor of the same name, Agustín Esteve, documented between 1764 and 1767. He attended the school of the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos, Valencia, and in 1772 went to Madrid to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, where he won a prize, although he was not to have an important academic career. He established himself in Madrid, where the ducal houses of Osuna and Alba were the first to give him commissions. One of these was for the portrait of Dona Joaquina Tellez-Giron (1784; Madrid, Museo del Prado), daughter of the 9th Duque de Osuna, painted when she was 13. For more than 25 years Esteve y Marques painted portraits, mainly for aristocratic circles, among whom his simple, flattering and uncritical style was well accepted.