María Cardarelly
María Cecilia Cardarelly Bousquet, known as María Cardarelly, was a Spanish photographer born in 1845 in Zaragoza and who died around 1920 in Madrid. She was one of the first women to run her own photographic studio in Spain and the first in Galicia. She is also known as the first portraitist of the poet Rosalía de Castro.
Her family were French dyers who moved to Galicia when she was a child, living in Lugo and then Santiago de Compostela. Growing up in a social circle of liberal intellectuals and foreign-born residents, she likely learned photography after working as a retoucher and background painter in a local studio. In 1864, at about 19, she began working as a studio photographer at her family’s home and did so for a few years before leaving photography.
Cardarelly is credited with early portraits of Rosalía de Castro, created around 1865. Later discoveries suggested a connection with the Castro and Murguía family. In 1866 the family moved to Ferrol to run a dye shop, but her father died in 1867. She married Madrid painter Juan Velasco and had a daughter, Matilde, in 1869. After his death, she supported herself by selling pianos, giving private piano lessons, and giving recitals, and she befriended pianist Eugenia Osterberger.
She remarried in 1881 to military engineer Antonio Pérez, who died a few years later. After a period with a smaller social circle, Cardarelly moved to Madrid in 1910 to live with relatives, and she is believed to have died around 1920.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 02:41 (CET).