On the occasion of the first centenary of the creation of the National Museum of Romanticism by Benigno de la Vega-Inclán, II Marquis de la Vega-Inclán, Correos issues a commemorative stamp. The image chosen to illustrate it is the Salón de Baile, one of the most representative rooms of the institution and the heart of bourgeois life in the 19th century.
The Museum of Romanticism has its origins in 1921, the year in which, under the name of Three Rooms of the Romantic Museum, an exhibition was organised at the headquarters of the Sociedad Española de Amigos del Arte (Spanish Society of Friends of Art). The works on display in this exhibition belonged to the Marquis de la Vega-Inclán and were subsequently donated to the Spanish State.
It was in 1924 that the then Romantic Museum was inaugurated in its current home, the palace of the Marquis of Matallana, a classicist style building constructed in the last third of the 18th century. During the 19th century it was occupied by the Counts of Puebla del Maestre and in the 1920s it also housed the Comisaría Regia de Turismo, an organisation linked to Benigno de la Vega-Inclán. Since then, the museum's collections have continued to grow through purchases, donations and deposits from other institutions and the building has undergone several refurbishments, the latest in 2009.
The current museum installation offers a multidisciplinary approach to Spanish Romanticism through the recreation of the interior of a 19th century high bourgeoisie home. Its rooms allow two different but complementary routes to be followed. On the one hand, a thematic tour based on aspects such as the reign of Isabel II, literature, orientalism or costumbrismo. On the other, an environmental tour based on the recreation of public and private spaces such as the dining room, the oratory, the men's office or the children's playroom through the exhibition of very diverse collections in terms of typology: painting, sculpture, furniture, musical instruments or clothing, among others.
