A painter of historical genre and naturalist subjects, Luis Jimenez y Aranda was a prominent participant in the dominant art movements of his day. Born in Seville, he was the younger brother of painter José Jiménez y Aranda, whose meticulously rendered historical genre paintings greatly influenced the young Luis.

After completing his studies at Seville's Academy of Fine Arts, he moved for a brief period to Madrid, where he studied the Spanish masters on display in the Prado. In 1867, the 22 year-old painter went with José Villegas and Francisco Peralta del Campo to Rome, where he worked among the Spanish painters there for the next nine years, focusing his painting on subjects set in elegant 18th-century interiors ...