Marià Fortuny

Marià Fortuny i Marsal (Reus, El Baix Camp, June 11, 1838 – Rome, November 21, 1874), was the leading Catalan painter, cartoonist and writer. His brief career encompassed works on a variety of subjects common in the art of the period, but left a very prominent track in the history of art, 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 was not indifferent to everything he saw and lived in his various trips. And all of these vital experiences went down in his work.

He was the first Catalan artist who stood out internationally as a recorder. His pictorial style was very influential for other painters because he even created a trend, fortunyisme.

In Reus, his name was given to a theater (Teatro Fortuny, still existing), a square (Plaça del Pintor Fortuny but known as Plaza del Condesito, one of the characters painted by Fortuny) and later on an avenue.

He was orphaned at the age of six, and was raised by his grandfather; He was his tutor and his best valedor in his early years and at his early age, favoring his artistic training with the Reusian painter Domènec Soberano. It counted on the small economic aid of two ecclesiastics of Reus.

As a child, Fortuny also worked with the silversmith and goldsmith Antoni Bassa, who will influence the detail that will characterize his painting in the future.

In 1852 he moved to Barcelona with his grandfather. There he went to work in the workshop of the sculptor Domènec Talarn, who, satisfied with the progress of his young pupil, managed a small pension of the Pious Work and free tuition at the School of Fine Arts of the Lonja, where he will receive for the first time Official training. His teachers at the School will be Pablo Milà and Fontanals, Luis Rigalt and Claudio Lorenzale, some highly influenced by the so-called “Nazarene purism”.

In 1858 he moved for the first time to Rome with a pension of the Diputación de Barcelona, ​​where it will establish friendship with other Spanish artists in the city like Eduardo Rosales or Dióscoro Puebla. This pension had a strict restriction, since it had to send constantly of its Works to the deputation to make valid his stay.

In Rome he also met several Italian artists; Among them Attilio Simonetti (1843-1925) became his disciple and fraternal friend.

At the same time, he attended the private school of Lorenzale, where he developed a taste for romanticism in a wider view.

In 1860 the First War of Morocco broke out, and the Diputación de Barcelona commissioned Fortuny to travel to this country in order to become a chronicler of the race in the company of Pedro Antonio de Alarcón. There it would integrate like painter in the regiment of the general Juan Prim, also originating of Reus. On February 12, 1860, his arrival in these lands was recorded and began his work as a chronicler of events.

Africa is going to be a discovery for Fortuny, dazzled by North African light and dazzled by the open plains, lights and inhabitants of Morocco, even learning Arabic notions to integrate better. It will be freed from this moment of conventions and academicisms, being attracted intensely by the Eastern subjects. As a result, Fortuny painted some of the most significant works of his production, such as La batalla de Tetuán (National Art Museum of Catalonia, Barcelona). Or landscapes where he practiced all the technical contributions that he was adding to his painting as North African Landscape (Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga), through which he manages to confer an intense ambient sensation of full sun to a composition of deceptively inconsequential appearance.

Likewise, Fortuny was interested in Arab picturesqueism, from which he would take inspiration from that time in the rest of his work, notably emphasizing in his later work The Odalisque.

After the war in Morocco after the peace agreement with Spain, Fortuny would return to Spain. On his way to Spain, he would settle for some time in Barcelona, ​​where he would create a friendship with Madrazo’s family, from which his daughter, Cecilia de Madrazo, would become his wife.

Once in Rome, he would attend the Academy of Fine Arts of France in the town Médicis, in which he would begin the sketches for his work “The battle of Tetuan”.

Later, in September and October of 1862, he asked the deputation of Barcelona to return to Africa to do a study of the light of the place in exchange for the sending of some works that would enhance in his stay in Morocco. This trip had a lot of influence in his style when he returned from this one. His works became an oriental style, best seen in his work “Queen Maria Cristina passing the troops,” request of the Duke of Riansares.

After his return to Europe he returned to Rome. He married Cecilia de Madrazo, daughter of the painter Federico de Madrazo and sister of the painter Raimundo de Madrazo, with whom Fortuny would establish an intimate friendship and with whom he shared an interest in bullfighting. This artistic expression fascinated the painter who was dazzled by his plastic values ​​and impressed by the mixture of color and ritual drama, elegance and brutality of the bullfighting universe. Works such as Bullfight. The painter’s picador (Carmen Thyssen Málaga) of 1867, left behind the idiosyncratic preciosity of the painter to capture with a keen sense of the instantaneous movement the feeling of brute strength and unbridled drama of the protagonists.

Shortly afterwards he painted one of his most famous paintings: the vicarage (National Museum of Art of Catalonia, Barcelona), supposedly inspired by the vicarage of his parish in Madrid, but which many identify as the vicarage of the Priority of San Pedro de Reus. Considered as the climax of his career. Here we summarize all the characteristic features of his work; The meticulousness and precision of its outline, the methodical use of color and the exhaustive study by the use of adequate light. Théophile Gautier praised the work extraordinarily, which contributed to increase its fame. The dealer Adolphe Goupil, with whom Fortuny had signed an exclusive contract in September 1866, bought the painting for 70,000 francs and did not want to expose it for fear of spoiling it, until it resold it for 250,000 francs.

The subsequent publication of his works “The Collector of Prints” and “Fantasia sobre el Fausto de Gounod” would finish catapulting his work until the definitive success.

Towards 1870 Fortuny moved to Paris, where he contemplated the works of the Louvre Museum, and the Luxembourg Museum, with a special interest in artists such as Horace Vernet, Eugène Fromentin, Alexandre Decamps and, in particular, Eugène Delacroix. In that year it exhibited several works in the Parisian room of Adolphe Goupil; This show was praised by several critics such as Théophile Gautier and was a key step in its international consecration.

In 1868 the Fortuny settled in Granada, where Mariano will paint various works and where he will attract some of his friends from Paris, such as Martín Rico, Jules Worms or Eduardo Zamacois from Bilbao (who would eventually die in Madrid before arriving).

Fortuny traveled briefly to London, then to Naples and the small town of Portici in southern Italy. At that time he had symptoms of depression; The commercial success had elevated to an enviable social and economic position, but the clientele demanded to him a type of painting that prevented him to evolve. In May 1874 he returned to Paris with the intention of breaking his relationship with Goupil. Finally November 9, 1874 returned to Rome, where he died on November 21, due to stomach bleeding caused by an ulcer.

In April 1875 the paintings still in his study and the various objects that Fortuny had collected in his private collection were auctioned at the Hotel Drouot in Paris, already reaching exorbitant prices.

Despite his death at age 36, his style and the technical virtuosity of his work define him as a great painter who indelibly marked an entire generation of European painters. It cultivated a figurative figuration, attentive to the details and games of lights, shaped with astonishing precision by a touch of brush apparently free and spontaneous. But the commercial success and the demands of his dealer Goupil restrained an evolution that he wanted, and that could revolutionize the Spanish painting of having remained alive. They point towards this new line his last works like Naked in the beach of Portici or The children of the painter in a Japanese hall (both in the Museum of the Prado).

His heart was buried in Reus, his native town, in the prior of San Pedro. In Reus, also, its name was given to the main theater of the city (the Fortuny Theater, still existent), a square (the Plaza of the painter Fortuny, more well-known like Plaza of the Condesito, personage protagonist of one of the most popular watercolors of the Teacher) and later to an avenue.

His son Mariano Fortuny and Madrazo was a notable painter, set designer and designer.