After finishing his academic studies, Bonsor travelled to southern Europe to deepen his understanding of Spanish art, in part as a way to consolidate his own painting style. Bonsor's own paintings from this period concentrate on figures of people and
costumbrismo scenes. Funding arrived in the form of periodic remittances from the family.
Cultural tourist The diaries in which Bonsor meticulously recorded his visit to Spain reveal him to be a systematic man. There is no obvious indication that when he set out to visit Spain, it had occurred to him that he would be living in the country for the rest of his life. His impressions of what he saw and the accounting for his expenses are recorded in detail in French. For most of the tour he was accompanied by Paulus, a Belgian Roman Catholic and a companion from his time at the
Beaux-Arts Académie in
Brussels. They traveled to
Burgos, where they made their first stop. The underlying objective of the trip was to visit the artistic monuments, art museums and anything else that might be of interest to youthful artists from the north. In his diary Bonsor recorded the names of more than ten of his former fellow students from the Beaux-Arts Académie who took the opportunity to visit other southern European countries. Several of the former student contemporaries he names later became members of the "
Les XX", the group of twenty Belgian artists who later formed the nucleus of an artistic revival in and around Brussels during the 1890s. In Burgos Bonsor and Paulus befriended
Primitivo Carcedo, who showed them the city, paying particular attention to
the great Gothic cathedral and the
Miraflores Charterhouse. Carcedo helped them improve their Spanish and supervised their first visit to a Spanish
taverna. Bonsor and Paulus later went to
Puerta del Sol. Bonsor recorded in his diary their visit to the
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando where they observed
Francisco Pradilla's recently completed
Doña Joanna the Mad. They spent time at
the Prado and made their own copies of paintings to better understand the underlying techniques of the originators. Shortly before their departure from Madrid they visited the
National Archaeological Museum, at which point Bonsor confided in his diary that the place bored him supremely. They travelled to
Toledo. The city in which
El Greco had lived out his last years immediately captivated Bonsor: "The city of Toledo I liked enormously, from the first glimpse: I see that there are many things that I have to paint here". The people he picked out were the types that tend to capture the attention of many foreign visitors, the street beggars, the
gypsies and the priests. His diary entries include precisely observed descriptions of historical and artisanal monuments. On some of these he produced brief literary essays that accompanied the letters of thanks that he sent to relatives for the cash remittances on which he was still dependent. Bonsor's next stop was
Córdoba, where he stayed for one night. He saw the city walls, the
Roman bridge (which was Córdoba's only bridge over the
Guadalquivir river until 1953), and
Córdoba's remarkable Mezquita-catedral. His diary indicates that his first visit to Seville was also something of a disappointment, however. Bonsor found little that he wanted to paint in Seville, and an entry in his diary indicated that his first visit to the city was disappointing. He visited the
Seville Cathedral, though with the sole purpose (he wrote) of admiring the works of
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. He also visited the
provincial museum and the
Hospital de la Caridad, where he came across a painting by
Juan de Valdés Leal. While respectful of Seville's rich artistic legacy, Bonsor was underwhelmed by contemporary Sevillan painters, whom he found "mediocre". Based on a recommendation from his father, who back in 1845 had visited the town of
Carmona in the hill country a short distance inland from Seville, in 1881 Bonsor decided to visit the place for himself. == Carmona ==