Rico was born El Escorial, Madrid, and received his earliest formal training at the city’s Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, where he studied under Jenaro Pérez Villaamil, the Academy’s first professor of landscape painting. Under the tutelage of Pérez Villaamil, Rico’s earliest works show him influenced by Romanticism, the style for which his teacher was known. In 1860, having been awarded a government-sponsored scholarship, Rico moved to Paris to continue his studies.