In 1917 Daniel Vázquez Díaz made his first portrait of the writer Pío Baroja intended for the section “Las letras y las artes” [Letters and Arts] of the newspaper El Sol. The image included a heading that pointed to its inclusion into the series Hombres de mi tiempo [Men of My Time]. The writer and the artist had met in 1903 through Ricardo Baroja, the writer’s brother. That same portrait—where Baroja is pictured in a foreshortened perspective and without his characteristic beret—was published on May 13^th 1923 with the title “Retrato y estudio grafológico” [Portrait and graphological study] in the newspaper ABC.

The portrait of Pío Baroja that belongs to the Fundación MAPFRE Collection, dated 1925, is a study for the oil painting Los hermanos Baroja [The Baroja Brothers]. It differs notably from the initial portrait in that the writer appears wearing a beret and a scarf in a medium close-up side view. With a scruffy albeit charming appearance Pío Baroja was depicted holding a few written pages justifying the downward direction of his gaze.