José María Rodríguez-Acosta

During his time with Larrocha, he had become friends with the painter, José María López Mezquita [es], who encouraged him to make a career of art.

After paying a visit to the Exposition Universelle (1900), he produced a long series of Granadian landscapes and genre scenes, some of which earned him honorable mention at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1904.

In 1914, at the beginning of World War I, he returned to Granada, where he began construction of his own home; an extensive and lush "carmen" [es], a type of walled house with gardens and an orchard.

Over the next decade, he painted little although, in 1923, he became involved in helping José Ortega y Gasset start up his cultural magazine, the Revista de Occidente.

The painting he was working on at the time, a female nude, has come to be called La Noche (Night), due to its resemblance to a sculpture by Michelangelo.