The painter Ignacio Zuloaga was born in 1870 at Eibar in the Basque Country. Son of a inlay worker, he was immersed very young in the artistic world. He was educated by the Jesuits and, extremely talented, started exhibiting in 1887.
At the Museo del Prado, he copied Spanish painters like Velázquez or El Greco and consider Zurbaran, Ribera or Goya like his masters.
In 1890, he settled in Paris where he worked with Eugène Carrière. He met Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Degas, Jacques-Emile Blanche and exhibited at the Salon that year. Between 1890 and 1894, he is very attached to Gaugin and Emile Bernard. His palette brightened and seemed to be influenced by Impressionism.
In 1898, Zuloaga moved to Segovia and lived with a family member, Daniel Zuloaga (1852-1921), one of the greatest Spanish ceramists at the time. The colors of his paintings then became darker.