Rafael Senet y Perez was born in Seville on 7th October, 1856. He studied under Joaquin Dominguez Becquer and Eduardo Cano de la Preda at the college of fine arts in Seville and then under J. Villegas y Cordero.

Senet then moved to Madrid where he continued his formal education by studying the old masters in the Prado. In 1881 he went to Rome and then travelled extensively in Italy, visiting Florence, Venice and Naples before returning to Seville at the beginning of the 1890s. He settled there and aligned himself with a group of landscape artists which had formed around Sanchez Perrier.

The development of international tourism in the 19th century meant that a new type of traveller visited the beauty spots of Europe. High on th...