Emilio Ferrer

EMILIO FERRER CABRERA (Cullera, Valencia, 1888 - 1962).
"Maja madrileña", 1940
Oil on gilt panel.
It has faults on the pictorial surface.
Signed and dated in the lower right area.
Measurements: 207 x 114 cm.
This portrait is inscribed within the regionalism of romantic heritage developed in Spain, and especially in the Madrid school, during the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Thus, although the composition and the attention to psychological capture are typical of a portrait, the painter pays particular attention to the details of the clothing, which is typically regionalist.
A painter specialising in Valencian genre scenes, Emilio Ferrer Cabrera also masterfully tackled landscape painting. He trained at the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts in Valencia, and completed his training by working with José Mongrell. In 1913 he was awarded a scholarship to further his studies in Paris and Rome. In the following years Ferrer exhibited his work in Valencia, Madrid and Barcelona, and in 1920 and 1922 he took part in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts. Between the end of 1927 and the beginning of 1928 he travelled to Buenos Aires, where he also exhibited his painting. He published his works in magazines of the time, such as "La Esfera", and in 1931 he held an important exhibition at the Societat Musical Santa Cecilia in Cullera, where several of his works were sold to British and American collectors. He also produced several editorial illustrations, such as those for the Spanish translations of the stories by the Catalan writer Caterina Albert i Paradís, under the pseudonym Víctor Català, published between 1928 and 1929. In 1935 he moved to Ceuta, where he took up a teaching post at the Hispano-Moroccan Institute, where he was surprised by the Civil War. He devoted himself first to portraiture and later to photography, although after the war he gradually returned to painting. In 1988, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, several celebrations were dedicated to him in Cullera. He is currently represented in the Museum of Fine Arts in Valencia.