Bernardo Blanco y Pérez

Blanco kept a cage of canaries on his Madrid balcony just to watch how light fell through their feathers. That habit ended up in his paintings, where sunlit rooms feel like a flock of tiny, golden brushstrokes. His 1871 *Interior of a Madrid Drawing Room* traps the same glow—turn on the lights in that corner of the Museo del Prado’s 19th-century gallery and you’ll see what he meant.