He settled in Madrid and completed his education with a visit to Paris in 1860; taking lessons from Léon Cogniet and coming under the influence of his friend Alfred Stevens.

In 1882 he, Stevens, Giuseppe de Nittis and Georges Petit established an "International Painting Exhibition" to promote foreign artists living in Paris.

The model for nearly all of the female figures in his genre paintings was Aline Masson, the daughter of the doorman at the Paris residence of the Marqués de Casa Riera [es].

In the late 1860s, he spent some time in Rome with his brother, working in the studios of Mariano Fortuny, who had married their sister Cecilia.

In 1894, he donated a collection of works by Francisco de Goya that he had acquired in 1869 to the Museo del Prado.