Joan Ferrer Miró

JOAN FERRER MIRÓ (Villanueva y Geltrú, 1850-Barcelona, 1931).
"Peasant girl".
Oil on canvas.
Signed on the back.
Measurements: 44 x 28 cm.; 61 x 44 cm.(frame).

Joan Ferrer Miró was a Catalan painter of the time of the Restoration. Son of a carpenter, he was born in Villanueva y la Geltrú. He received his first classes in his hometown, from where he left for Barcelona to continue his studies at the Academy of Pedro Borrell and at the Escuela de la Lonja. At Pere Borrell's academy he met and became friends with Romà Ribera, with whom he also shared a studio. He received classes from Antoni Caba in the Barcelona artistic-recreational society "El Gavilán", together with Simó Gómez, Eusebi Planas or Lluís Labarta. During this period he stood out as a portraitist and drew the Catalan bourgeoisie. Between 1874 and 1879 he went to Italy on a grant from Ferrer Vidal and Pablo Soler, to study at the Spanish Academy in Rome, where he transformed his stylistic discourse and began to make more costumbrist canvases. Once again in Villanueva, he opened the first academy of painting and drawing in the city, which produced painters such as Gaspar Miró i Lleó. Later he moved to live in Barcelona, in the Ciutat Vella, and began to make works that reflected the actions of the new Barcelona bourgeoisie that emerged from the "Gold Rush". In 1885 he presented at the Center of Watercolorists of Barcelona his work Amateur, which seems a prelude to one of his masterpieces, Public Exhibition of a Painting, gold medal at the Universal Exhibition of 1888. This painting was acquired by the Diputación Provincial, to be later transferred to the Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona. It is currently exhibited in the permanent collection of Modern Art of the National Museum of Art of Catalonia. In the Library Museum Victor Balaguer his work Exit of mass can be seen. From 1906 he dedicated himself to pedagogy and to making didactic lithographs.