Brinton in his 1909 essay was prescient of Zuloaga's future enamourment with Falangism: He personifies in extreme form the spirit of autocracy in art, the principle of absolutism so typical of his race and country. You will meet in these bold, affirmative canvases no hint of cowardice or compromise. The work is defiant, almost despotic. It does not strive to enlist sympathy nor does it fear to be frankly antipathetic...the tones not infrequently acidulous, and the surfaces sometimes hard and metallic. Reactionary if you will...