José Mirabent Gatell

JOSÉ MIRABENT GATELL (Barcelona, 1831 - 1899).
"Still life of fruit".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Size: 80 x 107 cm; 99 x 125 cm (frame).
In this canvas José Mirabent offers us a magnificent still life of fruits, of delicate elegance and accentuated naturalism. He captures the grapes, plums and peaches with great precision, and the vine leaves with botanical precision, recreating the details, but without neglecting the light and atmosphere, demonstrating a great mastery of colour and glazes.
José Mirabent studied at the La Lonja School in Barcelona, where he was a pupil of Pablo Milá Fontanals, Claudio Lorenzale and Segismundo Ribó, from whom he was influenced by the Nazarene aesthetic. In 1855 he joined the aforementioned school as an assistant and in 1872 became a teacher of decorative painting, textiles and prints. In his early years he can be considered a Romantic painter in the Nazarene style of his masters and painted mainly portraits and still lifes with flowers and fruit. He later specialised in interior decoration, an activity in which his works for the Gran Teatre del Liceu and the University of Barcelona, the Balaguer Museum in Vilanova i la Geltrú and the churches of Buen Suceso, the Salesas Reales and the convent of the Madres Reparadoras in Madrid are particularly noteworthy. With his paintings of flowers and fruit he took part in the National Exhibitions of Fine Arts in Madrid and won several prizes: honourable mention in those of 1856 and 1858, third medal in those of 1860 and 1867, and a decoration in 1871. He was also awarded a gold medal at the Universal Exhibition in Barcelona in 1888. As a portrait painter he portrayed Pablo Piferrer, Ramón Anglasells and Joaquín Rey Esteve, among others. In 1892 he took part in the First Modernist Festival. He is widely represented in the MNAC, as well as in the Museo del Prado, the Museo de Arte Moderno and the Museo Romántico in Madrid, the Real Academia de Sant Jordi, the Ateneo and the Galería de Catalanes Ilustres in Barcelona, etc.