Costarica 1897 - Victorian era public domain image

He grew up and was educated during the liberal reforms of the 1870s and 1880s, becoming an anti-clerical agnostic, not uncommon among educated youth in Guatemala during those decades. He graduated from the then prestigious Instituto Nacional for boys, where he was a classmate of Rafael Spínola - who would go on to become editor-in-chief of La Ilustración Guatemalteca and La Idea Liberal, and eventually secretary of infrastructure to President Manuel Estrada Cabrera - who in 1896 described him as a consumed artist who used to draw his classmates and teacher during class. Towards the end of the 1890s, he worked with a partner in "Fernández and Valdeavellano" under the name "El Siglo XX" ("The 20th Century"). By this time he was living in an Arabic-style house in Guatemala City and had a steady stream of socialites who wanted to be portrayed; some of his best work was published fortnightly in La Ilustración Guatemalteca. After a trip to Europe, his studio became El Arte Nuevo in the 1900s, and towards the end of his life he founded the company Valdeavellano y Bolaños, where he worked until his death in 1928.