Misplaced Pages

#812187

53-480: Born into a bourgeois Catalan industrial family from Manlleu, Santiago Rusiñol i Prats (Barcelona, 1861 – Aranjuez, 1931) was asked by his paternal grandfather and godfather, Jaume Rusiñol, to continue the family tradition and become a cotton manufacturer. Instead, the young Rusiñol chose to enter the Catalan and Spanish art scene. A painter, narrator, collector, dramatist, amateur archaeologist, journalist and key figure of

106-486: A bar Casas engaged heavily in graphic design, adopting the Art Nouveau style that would come to define modernisme . He designed posters for the café, many of which depicted Romeu's gaunt visage. He also executed a series of advertisements for Codorniu , a brand of cava (or, as its ads of the time claimed, champagne ) and anisette . Over the next decade, he would design poster ads for everything from cigarette papers to

159-521: A graphic designer, his posters and postcards helped to define the Catalan art movement known as modernisme . Casas was born in Barcelona. His father had made a fortune in Matanzas , Cuba ; his mother was from a well-off Catalan family. In 1877 he abandoned the regular course of schooling to study art in the studio of Joan Vicens . In 1881, still in his teens, he was a co-founder of the magazine L'Avenç ;

212-511: A painter and his popularity as a dramatist. Thanks to Rusiñol and a small group of antique ironwork collectors (amongst them several of friends of his who shared his obsession), the art of wrought iron was no longer seen as the expression of a lesser creative activity and became a subject for study. At the same time, it underwent an important revaluation which, like in many other arts and crafts, showed itself especially in Modernista architecture (e.g.

265-648: A personal collection of art. That was how the Cau Ferrat became one of the favourite gathering-places for the bohemians of the end of the century. The list of well-known figures of the time who set foot in the rooms of the Cau includes Joan Maragall , Emilia Pardo Bazán , the Belgian musicians Eugène Ysaÿe and Ernest Chausson , Àngel Guimerà , Benito Pérez Galdós , Víctor Balaguer , Ángel Ganivet , Enrique Granados , Narcís Oller , and Manuel de Falla . On his death, Rusiñol left

318-557: A quarter of the collection, although the main pottery-making centres of Valencia, Aragon, Castile, Andalusia and Murcia are also represented. The collection is completed with a few items from Majorca, Italy and Florence. 41°14′6.24″N 1°48′45.85″E  /  41.2350667°N 1.8127361°E  / 41.2350667; 1.8127361 Santiago Rusi%C3%B1ol Santiago Rusiñol i Prats ( Catalan: [səntiˈaɣu ruziˈɲɔl] , Spanish: [santiˈaɣo rusiˈɲol] ; Barcelona 25 February 1861 – Aranjuez 13 June 1931)

371-566: A recent general strike , although in fact the painting, which shows Guardia Civil routing a crowd, had been executed at least two years before that strike. In 1904, the same piece won first prize at the General Exposition in Madrid. During a 1904 sojourn in Madrid, he produced a series of sketches of the Madrid intelligentsia, and befriended painters Eliseu Meifrèn and Joaquín Sorolla , as well as Agustí Querol Subirats , official sculptor to

424-704: A rupture that lasted ten years, although he kept in touch with his daughter. That same year he went to study in Paris, where he lived on and off for the next decade. In 1893 he set up his studio in Sitges , which today stands as the Cau Ferrat . Sitges became a modernist reference point for artists, writers and musicians, including Rusiñol, and modernist festivals, combining theatre, poetry, painting and music were organized there. He continued to write, chiefly narrative works and poems in prose. Some of his novels were adapted and performed in

477-641: A short book Por Cataluña (desde mi carro) , with text by Rusiñol and illustrations by Casas. Returning together to Paris, they lived together at the Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre , along with painter and art critic Miquel Utrillo and the sketch artist Ramon Canudas . Rusiñol chronicled these times in as series of articles "Desde el Molino" ("From the Mill") for La Vanguardia ; again Casas illustrated. Casas became an associate of

530-471: A trip to the United States, during which he once again made portraits of the rich and famous. By the 1920s, Casas had fallen far away from the avant-gardiste tendencies of his youth. If anything, his work from this period looks like of an academic painter of an earlier time than his work of the 1890s. He continued to paint landscapes and portraits, as well as an anti-tuberculosis poster and others, but by

583-593: Is concentrated mainly in two of the rooms on the ground floor of the Cau Ferrat, the Kitchen/Dining-room and the Sala del Brollador. Here the visitor will find a varied selection of more than 200 items ranging from the fourteenth century to the nineteenth century, mainly plates and dishes, but also bowls, pharmaceutical jars, washbasins, fruit-stands, pitchers, soup tureens and various tiled panels. These items come from very varied origins. Catalan potteries account for about

SECTION 10

#1732891701813

636-486: Is the largest in terms of the number of items. It contains those works by Rusiñol that the artist chose to hold onto all his life and for which he felt a special affection. Furthermore, many of the leading artists of Catalonia of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are represented: Ramon Casas , Pablo Picasso , Arcadi Mas i Fondevila , Isidre Nonell , Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa , Ramon Pichot , etc. Some were friends of Rusiñol. The paintings and drawings in

689-666: The Enciclopèdia Espasa . For the 1900 Exposition Universelle (1900) in Paris, the Spanish committee chose two of Casas' full-length oil portraits: an 1891 portrait of Erik Satie and an 1895 portrait of Casas' sister Elisa. His 1894 Garrote Vil —a portrayal of an execution— won a major prize in Munich in 1901; his work was shown not only in the major capitals of Europe, but as far away as Buenos Aires , Argentina . In 1902, twelve of his canvasses were installed permanently in

742-753: The Netherlands , Madrid , and Galicia . He continued to have major exhibits in Spain and France. In 1913 he acquired an architecturally notable home in Barcelona, a tower on Carrer de San Gervasi (now Carrer de les Carolines) in the Sant Gervasi neighborhood; in 1915, he, Rusiñol, and Clarassó exhibited together in the Sala Parés, celebrating the 25th anniversary of their first joint exhibition there. In 1916, Casas and Deering traveled to Tamarit in Catalonia. Deering purchased

795-614: The Paris Salon in 1908. He was also part of the famous social gatherings of the Els Quatre Gats brewery on Carrer de Montsió in Barcelona run by Pere Romeu , a place of social gathering and an alternative art room, and frequented by a young Pablo Picasso . He maintained close friendships with the painter Ramon Casas and the sculptor Enric Clarasó until his death. In the following two decades, his prestige grew in Barcelona despite disagreements with Noucentista artists and critics of

848-635: The Sala Parés , and in 1883 in Paris the Salon des Champs Elysées exhibited his portrait of himself dressed as a flamenco dancer; the piece won him an invitation as a member of the salon of the Societé d'artistes françaises. The next few years he continued to paint and travel, spending most autumns and winters in Paris and the rest of the year in Spain, mostly in Barcelona but also in Madrid and Granada ; his 1886 painting of

901-676: The 9 October 1881 issue included his sketch of the cloister of Sant Benet in Bages . That same month, accompanied by his cousin Miquel Carbó i Carbó, a medical student, he began his first stay in Paris , where he studied that winter at the Carolus Duran Academy and later at the Gervex Academy, and functioned as a Paris correspondent for L'Avenç . The next year he had a piece exhibited in Barcelona at

954-437: The Cau reflect its owner’s tastes as well as the artistic trends in vogue at that time: impressionism, modernism, symbolism, etc. Most of the works are by the artist himself. The tour of the collection follows the order of the rooms: Entrance Hall, Kitchen/Dining-Room, Sala del Brollador (Fountain room), Office, Living-Room and Recess, Staircase and Great Hall. Rusiñol’s reputation as a collector of ironwork preceded his fame as

1007-563: The Ecclesiastical Court of the Diocese of Barcelona for authorisation of the sale, which was finally completed on 30 July 1893. Rusiñol paid 1000 pesetas for the house and another 2000 to have it knocked down so a new one could be built to serve as a home and studio. The plan was commissioned from the architect Francesc Rogent, who incorporated in the façade the large Gothic windows from Sitges's old castle, recently demolished to make way for

1060-582: The Fayanç Català gallery in Barcelona, he displayed 200 charcoal sketches, which he then donated to the Museo de Barcelona. His show in Madrid was at the Ministry of Tourism, and featured portraits of the city's leading figures, including the king. His life continued in this vein for some time. In 1910 executed a painting of the funeral of his friend the art critic and novelist Raimon Casellas , who had committed suicide

1113-477: The Great Hall is found the collection of glass from modern times, while the Sala del Brollador is the setting for the archaeological or antique glass. The different origin of the items and the wide time-scale they cover mean that a lot of the different techniques used in working this material in the course of history are present. On entering the Cau Ferrat for the first time, the visitor sees the large number of items

SECTION 20

#1732891701813

1166-483: The Modernista movement, Santiago Rusiñol conceived of art as a priesthood and of the artist as the chosen one who, due to an ineluctable calling, is predestined to the sacrifice of living his ideal to the ultimate consequences. It was from Sitges that Rusiñol spread his theory of Total Art, of art as a new religion. the celebration of the Festes Modernistes (1892–1899), the building of the Cau Ferrat (1893–1894) and

1219-475: The Sala Parés, in Barcelona, in 1879, in a collective exhibition; he would work with this gallery throughout his life. He also painting landscapes, figures, and literary scenes as opposed to the historical themes which at the time were fashionable. His work often depicted depicting natural scenes of Catalan landscapes. He also painted scenes related to work and of the urban landscape, displaying characters in natural attitudes or engaged in their daily tasks. His work

1272-588: The Societé d'artistes françaises, allowing him to exhibit two works annually at their salon without having to pass through jury competition. With Rusiñol and with sculptor Enric Clarasó he exhibited at Sala Parés in 1890; his work from this period, such as Plen Air and the Bal du Moulin de la Galette lies somewhere between an academic style and that of the French Impressionists . The style that would become known as modernisme had not yet fully come together, but

1325-551: The Spanish government. In Querol's studio, he executed an equestrian portrait of the king, Alfonso XIII , which was soon purchased by the American collector Charles Deering , who, over the next few years would commission or purchase several of Casas paintings. Increasingly in demand as a portraitist, he settled again for a while in Barcelona. Shortly thereafter he made the acquaintance of a young artist's model named Júlia Peraire, 22 years his junior. He first painted her in 1906 when she

1378-536: The annual Salons. The emerging modernista art world gained a center with the opening of Els Quatre Gats , a bar modeled on Le Chat Noir in Paris. Casas largely financed this bar on the ground floor of Casa Martí , a building by Architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch in Montsió Street near the center of Barcelona; it opened in June 1897 and lasted for six years (and was later reconstructed in 1978). His partners in

1431-466: The bar itself, and Forma (1904–1908), to which Casas also contributed. Pèl & Ploma sponsored several prominent art exhibitions, including Casas' own well-received first solo show (1899 at Sala Parés), which brought together a retrospective of his oil paintings as well as a set of charcoal sketches of contemporary figures prominent in Barcelona's cultural life. While his painting career continued successfully through this period, as part owner of

1484-496: The building of the Cau Ferrat and all the collections it contained to the town of Sitges, with the condition that it be made a public museum, which was inaugurated on 16 April 1933. Rusiñol’s decision to leave the Cau to the people of Sitges closed the circle begun that far-off night of 5 January 1892, when the artist said in the Fonda Subur that he wanted to take with him in his pictures a souvenir of what he had seen here. In each of

1537-524: The buildings designed by Gaudí, Puig i Cadafalch or Domènech i Montaner). Unlike the collection of ironwork, part of which already decorated the walls of the studio-workshop in Barcelona that Santiago Rusiñol shared with Enric Clarasó, the collection of glass arrived in Sitges after the Cau Ferrat was built. It does not make up a uniform whole so much as two large collections with a total of almost 400 items acquired by Rusiñol at two different moments in his life. In

1590-414: The civil registry with the names of Jaume Jacint Lluís, rather than Santiago. Despite being the inheritor of the family business, he developed in his adolescence an interest in art which would go on to be his life's work. On 19 June 1886, he married Lluïsa Denís i Reverter. The following year, his daughter, Maria Agustina ( ca ), was born. A few months later, however, his restless nature, lack of interest in

1643-407: The course of the third Festa Modernista, there was another inauguration which was a much bigger and more splendid affair than the first as the artist timed it to coincide with the arrival of two pictures by El Greco he had bought a few months earlier in Paris. Although he spent long periods there between 1894 and 1899, Rusiñol’s ultimate intention was not to live comfortably there so much as to create

Cau Ferrat Museum - Misplaced Pages Continue

1696-455: The crowd at the Madrid bullfighting ring was to be the first of many highly detailed paintings of crowds. That year he survived tuberculosis , and convalesced for the winter in Barcelona. Among the artists he met in this period of his life, and who influenced him, were Laureà Barrau , Santiago Rusiñol , Eugène Carrière , Pierre Puvis de Chavannes , and Ignacio Zuloaga . Casas and Rusiñol traveled through Catalonia in 1889, and collaborated on

1749-424: The enterprise were Pere Romeu , who largely played host to the bar, as well as Rusiñol and Miquel Utrillo. The bar hosted tertulias and revolving art exhibits, including one of the first one-man shows by Pablo Picasso ; the most prominent piece in its permanent collection was a lighthearted Casas self-portrait, depicting him smoking a pipe while pedaling a tandem bicycle with Romeu as his stoker. The original of

1802-428: The entire village, and placed Casas in charge of the project of restoring it. Several years later, in 1924, he would return to Tamarit to paint numerous landscapes. Also in 1916, Deering purchased a house in Sitges , known as Can Xicarrons (now a museum), and the magazine Vell i Nou dedicated an issue to Casas. Up until this time, Casas had kept his distance from the battles of World War I , but in 1918 he visited

1855-427: The family business, and desire to paint and travel led him to hand over the company's management to his brother Albert, a businessman and politician. Santiago thereafter began to travel through Catalonia, Spain, France, and Italy. Travel would go on to be a constant in his life. In 1888, he established himself as a writer, regularly contributing to the newspaper La Vanguardia . In 1889 he broke off ties with his family,

1908-487: The first Festa Modernista), until in the spring of 1893 he decided to buy a little fisherman's house next to the sea in the Sant Joan district. The last owner of the house, who had died decades before, had left it in her will to Our Lord God with the intention that the income from the house should be used for saying mass for her soul and those of her predecessors. In view of this unusual situation, an application had to be made to

1961-436: The front; he painted a self-portrait wearing a military cape. Casas, Rusiñol, and Clarasó resumed regular annual joint exhibitions at Sala Parés in 1921; these continued until Rusiñol's death in 1931. However, that year he had a falling out with his friend Utrillo over Maricel Casas's close association with Deering; the breach was never healed. In 1922, Casas finally married Júlia Peraire, and in 1924 she came along with him on

2014-546: The inauguration of the monument to El Greco (1898) made Sitges the Mecca of Modernisme and Rusiñol the high priest of his new movement that aspired to transform society through culture. Thanks to this, Rusiñol was able to build up his own personal mythos. Rusiñol arrived in Sitges in October 1891 and stayed there until January 1892. In the months that followed he went back frequently (that same year, he organised what would later be known as

2067-476: The items to be seen in the Cau Ferrat there is a bit of Santiago Rusiñol’s life and art. Including them all is an almost impossible undertaking and something that exceeds the aims of this visitor’s guide, whose purpose is just to give an overall view of the man and bring him within reach of those people entering the Cau Ferrat for the first time and thinking it might be just an ordinary museum. The Cau Ferrat's collection of paintings and drawings, along with ironwork,

2120-745: The key people were beginning to know one another, and successful Catalan artists were increasingly coming to identify themselves with Barcelona as much as with Paris. His fame continued to spread through Europe and beyond as he exhibited successfully in Madrid (1892, 1894), Berlin (1891, 1896) and at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893); meanwhile the bohemian circle that included Casas and Rusiñol began with greater frequency to organize exhibitions of their own in Barcelona and Sitges . With this increasing activity in Catalonia, he settled more in Barcelona, but continued to travel to Paris for

2173-577: The monastery. In 1908 Casas and his now-patron Deering traveled through Catalonia. Deering purchased a former hospital in Sitges to transform it into a sometime residence. Miquel Utrillo dubbed it Marycel . Later that year, Casas began a six-month journey to Cuba and the United States at Deering's invitation. During this time, he executed a dozen oil portraits and over thirty charcoal drawings of Deering's friends and associates. Returning to Spain in April 1909, he put on solo shows in both Barcelona and Madrid. At

Cau Ferrat Museum - Misplaced Pages Continue

2226-416: The museum houses and the horror vacui that presides over the whole building, for which reason many items are only glanced at or even go unnoticed. Amongst the items that are most often missed are the furniture and sculptures, which are often considered simple decorative complements of no intrinsic value. In the course of his life, Santiago Rusiñol put together a considerable collection of ceramics which today

2279-533: The new Town Hall. Rusiñol's home and studio, inaugurated a few months later, inherited the name of Cau Ferrat from the studio in Barcelona the artist had shared until then with his friend Enric Clarasó . Rusiñol soon realized that there was not enough room, however, and in May 1894 he bought the house next door to complete the building of the Cau Ferrat as it exists today. The following September he moved his collection of wrought iron there from Barcelona, and on 4 November, in

2332-467: The painting—or most of it: nearly a third of the canvas was cut away by an intervening owner—is now in Barcelona's Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC); a creditable reproduction resides in the revived Els Quatre Gats . Like Le Chat Noir , Els Quatre Gats attempted its own literary and artistic magazine, to which Casas was a major contributor. That was short-lived, but was soon followed by Pèl & Ploma , which would slightly outlast

2385-405: The previous year shortly after Barcelona's semana trágica and, for Deering, painted a second version of La Carga , this time with the prominent foreground figure of a Guardia Civil on foot rather than on horseback. Over the remaining years before World War I he traveled extensively in Spain and Europe, sometimes alone and sometimes with Deering, visiting Vienna , Budapest , Munich , Paris,

2438-503: The rotunda of the Cercle de Liceu , the exclusive private club associated with Barcelona's famous opera house. In 1903 he became a full Societaire of the Salon du Champ de Mars in Paris, which would have allowed him to exhibit there annually, but in fact he only exhibited there for two more years. In 1903, his piece for the salon was one that had originally been called La Carga ( The Charge ), which he retitled Barcelona 1902 in reference to

2491-448: The theatre, such as L'auca del senyor Esteve , written in 1907 and released a few years later. In the first decade of the twentieth century, he consolidated his prestige as a prolific painter and writer, both in Barcelona and throughout Spain and Paris. In 1899, due to a severe illness, he was reunited with his wife. When he recovered, he returned to France with his family to detoxify from morphine addiction. He became an official member of

2544-737: The time (notably with the art critic Eugenio d'Ors , who wrote in the newspaper La Veu de Catalunya ). In 1917, he was awarded the Legion of Honor by the French government. He died in Aranjuez in 1931. Manuel Azaña , president of the Spanish Republic's provisional government, ordered an official funeral in Madrid. Rusiñol was later buried in Barcelona. He studied at the studio of the painter Tomàs Moragas , where he learned drawing and various techniques, such as oil and watercolor . He first showed his work at

2597-567: The time of his death in 1932, shortly after the emergence of the Second Spanish Republic , he was already more a figure of the past. Casas contracted tuberculosis, a deadly, wide-spread disease of the time, and after a protracted, months-long illness he died on 29 February 1932 at his home on Carrer Descartes in the Sant Gervasi neighborhood of Barcelona, aged 66. His tuberculosis poster was published 3 years before his death. His grave

2650-404: Was 18. She soon became his favorite model and his lover. His family did not approve of her; they eventually married, but not until 1922. Casas' mother purchased the monastery of Sant Benet de Bages in 1907 and hired Puig i Cadafalch to restore it. Casas would spend much time there, and would repeatedly depict the monastery and its surroundings. Five years later, when his mother died, he inherited

2703-510: Was a Catalan painter , poet , journalist , collector and playwright . He was one of the leaders of the Catalan modernisme movement. He created more than a thousand paintings and wrote numerous works in Catalan and Spanish. He was born in Barcelona into a textile industrialist family from Manlleu , where they owned the textile mill town known as Can Ramissa. Santiago Rusiñol appears in

SECTION 50

#1732891701813

2756-424: Was a Catalan artist. Living through a turbulent time in the history of his native Barcelona , he was known as a portraitist, sketching and painting the intellectual, economic, and political elite of Barcelona, Paris , Madrid , and beyond. He was also known for his paintings of crowd scenes ranging from the audience at a bullfight to the assembly for an execution to rioters in the Barcelona streets ( El garrot ). Also

2809-575: Was generally well-received by critics of the time. In 1888 he had his first solo exhibition in the Parés Gallery, published articles in the newspaper La Vanguardia, exhibited for the first time at the Paris Salon, and participated in the Barcelona World's Fair . Ramon Casas Ramon Casas i Carbó ( Catalan pronunciation: [rəˈmoŋ ˈkazəs] ; 4 January 1866 – 29 February 1932)

#812187