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Because Dalí wasn't the only worthy Catalan painter, I'll be introducing here to others who you probably know less.
Mariŕ FORTUNY i Marsal (1838-1874)
Self-portrait
The leading Catalan painter of his day, with an international reputation. His brief career encompassed works on a variety of subjects common in the art of the period, including the Romantic fascination with Orientalist themes, historicist genre painting, military painting of Spanish colonial expansion, as well as a prescient loosening of brush-stroke and color.
Fortuny paintings are colorful, with a vivacious iridescent brushstroke that at times recalls the softness of Rococo painting but also anticipates impressionist brushwork. Fortuny's recollection of Morocco is not a costume ball, but a fierce, realistic portrait which includes bare-chested warriors. Richard Muther states:
his marvellously sensitive eye … discerned the stalls of Moorish carpet-sellers, with little figures swarming, and the rich display of woven stuffs of the East; the weary attitude of old Arabs sitting in the sun; the sombre, brooding faces of strange snake-charmers and magicians. This is no Parisian East…every one here speaks Arabic.
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A few of his pictures:
La vicaria (known in English as The Spanish Wedding)
It depicts the signing of a marriage contract, in which elements are introduced that reveal his wide-ranging culture and his fascination and admiration for Goya. In this fictitious architectural space Fortuny brings together elements from different places, but also gives an absolute unity and coherence. Notable for their visual quality are the screen, the lamp hanging from the ceiling, the painting, the bookcase with its huge parchment volumes, the coat of arms on the balcony and the brazier, a prop he included in a number of works to balance the composition. The central group stands out of the bride and groom, accompanied by a long line of witnesses, friends and family dressed in eighteenth-century garb and whose elegance contracts with a second group situated to the right of the composition, which represents the common people. Fortuny utilized his own family members as models.
L'odalisca (The Odalisque)
El venedor de tapissos (The Carpet Seller)
Battle of Wad Rass
Battle of Tetuan
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