Early Life, Family and Training Born in Seville on 22 November 1836, Manuel García Hispaleto entered a world shaped by the steady, if only moderately successful, commerce of his father, who operated an import sales business. The boy’s destiny was drawn toward the brush quite early. In 1847, at the tender age of eleven, he began his formal training by attending classes at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de Santa Isabel de Hungría. This early immersion in the arts was not a solitary pursuit, for his older brother, Rafael García Hispaleto, was also a student of the craft and a painter himself…