Catalan school; 19th century.

Catalan school; 19th century.
"Portrait of a lady.
Oil on canvas.
Measurements: 71 x 59 cm.
The feminine figure was the protagonist of the Catalan modernism; a modern woman, popular or bourgeois manola from Barcelona, young and elegant ladies surprised in their leisure moments, reading, walking or looking at the spectator, melancholic and tempting. The Catalan school of modernist drawing was radically opposed to the decorativist and symbolic style of the prevailing Art Nouveau. Realistic and synthetic, it focused its attention on the contemporary urban world and not on the literary symbol. The Catalans use the same sinuous, moving and profoundly expressive line, but the conceptual basis is totally personal and different. What stands out in this work is the impression of transience; in the modern, industrial, urban world, nothing remains, society is constantly changing, the city is under construction and people hurry through its streets.

In this work the artist depicts a lady with an elegant pose charged with instantaneity, typical of the female representations of the Catalan school of the late 19th century. The artist combines the formal sensuality of the sinuous, typically modernist line with the great realism with which he has captured a strictly contemporary image.