Maricel Museum, Sitges, Spain

The Maricel Museum is a museum located in the centre of Sitges; reopened after a major refurbishment in 2015. The Maricel Museum is part of the Barcelona Provincial Council Local Museum Network.

The Maricel Museum exhibits a complete artistic route from the tenth century to realism and figuration during the first half of the twentieth century, passing through the art collections of Dr. Jesús Pérez Rosales and the Collection of Sitges, with works of great quality. The museum exhibition integrates multiple languages, techniques and artistic media in order to achieve a maximum consistency in the chronological sequence of the development of the arts.

The ground floor of the Maricel Museum covers four clearly differentiated areas. At the ancient Gothic chapel of the Hospital of Sant Joan and the contiguous room there’s a sample that foreshadows the museum’s collection, as one pair of capitals dating from the tenth century, the Maiestas Domini dating from the thirteen century and altarpieces of Sant Salvador d’Alzina de Ribelles (Jaume Cabrera, c. 1400) and the Virgin, dating from the fourteen century and works of Pedro Orrente, Antonio Almirall, Santiago Rusiñol, Ramon Casas and Pere Jou. Along with the chapel hall, the viewpoint is the most spectacular hall with views over the sea and three large “noucentista” sculptures (Joan Rebull). The Romanesque chapel hall dedicated to St. Bartholomew, .foueteen century, evokes Dr. Jesús Pérez-Rosales.

In 1969 the Diputación de Barcelona bought the Maricel de Mar building with the aim of installing the heterogeneous collection of Dr. Jesús Pérez-Rosales (Manila, 1896-Barcelona, ​​1989), a well-known gynecologist and passionate collector, after a year The new Maricel Museum was officially inaugurated. Composed of more than three thousand pieces of the most diverse origin, the collection includes Romanesque murals (such as the Pantocrator of Santa Maria de Cap d’Aran, dating from the 12th century), examples of Gothic painting on a table (including two pieces From the altarpiece by Sant Pere de Cubells, by Pere Serra), Renaissance carvings and altarpieces, modernist and noumentistic sculptures by Josep Llimona (Discontent), Enric Clarasó (Head of a child crying), Joan Rebull (Descasno, Aurora or Gitanilla), Josep Clarà, Josep Cañas or Pablo Gargallo (the reaper), six plafons in Josep Maria Sert’s cloth, allegorical of the First World War, as well as numerous paintings, furniture, pieces of liturgical goldsmiths, ceramics and porcelain.

Since 1995 the Maricel Museum has also housed the Art Collection of the town of Sitges, which occupies several rooms on the second floor. In them you can see some fifty works by sitgetanos artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and others who were closely linked to the town in this same period. This art fund allows the visitor to make a suggestive tour of the last two centuries of Catalan painting, from Joaquim Espalter (born in Sitges in 1809) to Pere Pruna (who spent many years here during the 1940s and 1950s).

The Luminist School of Sitges, which served as a bridge between Mariano Fortuny and the modernists, is profusely represented, with pieces by Felip Masó (among which the emblematic Procession of St. Bartholomew), Joaquim de Miró (The collection of the malvasia) Josep Batlle i Amell, Arcadio Mas (The procession of Corpus in Sitges), Juan Roig and Soler and Antoni Almirall. There are also several works by Santiago Rusiñol among which stand out Sunset, painted in Biniaraix (Mallorca), and the portraits of the sitgetans Salvador Robert, Pere Forment and Lluís Magrans. Ramón Casas is the exceptional portrait of Charles Deering, the character who at the beginning of the 20th century promoted the construction of the Maricel ensemble.

La Maternitat del sitgetano Joaquim Sunyer opens the room dedicated to Noucentisme, where you can also see paintings and drawings by Agustí Ferrer Pino, Josep Vidal and Josep M. Llopis de Casades, among others. The exhibition is completed with pieces by Artur Carbonell (Girl in Mourning), Guillem Bergnes (Rocas de Sant Sebastià), Alfred Sisquella and the aforementioned Pere Pruna.

Attached to the Art Collection of the town of Sitges is the Maritime Collection of Emerencià Roig i Raventós (Sitges, 1881 – Barcelona, ​​1935), donated by her brother to the Town Council of Sitges. Roig was an important specialist in maritime subjects and author of books such as La pesca a Catalunya (1926), La marina catalan del vuit-cents (1929) and Sitges dels nostres avis (1934). The collection consists of a variety of models and miniatures of boats, drawings and engravings, maps, nacreous instruments (sectants, compasses, etc.) and fishing tackle (pots, longlines, hooks, needles for repairing nets, etc.) , Formerly used by fishermen along the Catalan coast.

The museum included works from the collection of Dr. Jesús Pérez-Rosales that never had been exhibited in public, acquisitions by the Sitges Heritage Association since 2012 (Ramon Casas, Miquel Utrillo, Arcadi Mas i Fondevila, Artur Carbonell i Augustí Ferrer Pino) ​​and donations from artist’s relatives (Pere Jou and Alfred Sisquella).The museum’s own collection was complemented with several works from loans and deposits from art collections of the Government of Catalonia, the Museum of the Provincial Government of Barcelona and the Montserrat Museum, primarily with artists from “Modernisme” and “Noucentisme” linked to Sitges as Ramon Casas, Joaquim Sunyer, Lola Anglada, Pere Jou and Alfred Sisquella, among others. It also emphasizes the incorporation of valuable pieces of furniture from the ancestral home of Can Falç, currently under restoration.