A prolific painter, Onofre Jarpa was part of the first generation of artists to embrace Chilean landscape painting, helping to elevate it into a national art form. Trained in Chile and then in Europe, Jarpa returned to his home country opposed to the ideas of Realism, a movement that he found to be brutal and inharmonious. Instead, he argued for an understanding of the artist as mediator, interpreting a scene and producing work that captured idealized nature. In En las cordilleras de Chillán, Quebrada del Manzano (In the Chillán Mountain Range, Manzano Ravine), he painted green fields and white-capped Andean peaks, giving his viewers a romanticized and idealized view of a classic, and topographically indicative, Chilean landscape.