His grandfather and father were writers and his brother was the sculptor Isidoro Brocos [gl],[2] who was also his first teacher at the Academia de Belas Artes in A Coruña.

Two years later, he moved to Brazil, where he eventually found work in Rio de Janeiro illustrating the mildly satirical weekly republican magazine O Mequetrefe (a term that describes a nosy person who is a bit of a scamp).

This income enabled him to enter the Academia Imperial de Belas Artes, where he studied under Victor Meirelles and João Zeferino da Costa.

By 1890, he was exhibiting at the Salon and felt that his education was complete, so he accepted an invitation to teach at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes (successor to the Imperial Academy) from its director, Rodolfo Bernardelli.

He was able to become a naturalized citizen with little difficulty, and was appointed Professor of Figurative Drawing there, a position he held for the rest of his life,[1] with a brief leave of absence to create some decorations for the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral.