Josep Armet

JOSEP ARMET PORTANELL (Barcelona, 1843 - 1911).
"Forest with figures".
Oil on canvas.
Signed
Measurements: 86 x 142 cm; 113 x 169 cm (frame).
Outstanding painter and lithographer, Armet cultivated landscape, genre painting, portrait and decorative painting. He began his training at the School of Fine Arts of La Lonja in Barcelona, where he was taught by Ramón Martí Alsina. In the early sixties of the nineteenth century he moved to Rome to further his studies, and there he became friends with Mariano Fortuny. He sent works to national and local exhibitions, being awarded an honorable mention in the National Exhibition of 1864, and a third medal in the edition of 1866. He also exhibited regularly at the Sala Parés in Barcelona, starting in 1877. In 1872 he was awarded in the Official Exhibition of Le Havre, in France, and in 1878 he participated in the Universal Exhibition of Paris. In the field of lithography he made in 1866 a series entitled "La juventud pintada por sí misma" (Youth painted by itself) in the line marked by Eusebio Planas, of which the publication was forbidden. As a decorator, it is worth mentioning the paintings he made for the Café del Liceo in Barcelona. At first his language was ascribed to the pattern of the School of Olot, a town to which he had moved in 1870 fleeing from yellow fever, along with the painters Urgell, Caba and others, collaborating actively with his colleagues in the consolidation of the Olot Art Center. For his landscapes he took sketches from life, which he then transferred to oil, sifted by artificial light. His style of these years is inscribed within the Catalan realist landscape painting, with appreciable Roman influences in his technical preciosity. However, during his last years his style evolved in a line that links with the work of Ramon Casas and the first Picasso. He turned his gaze towards street themes, contemporary and featuring ordinary people, and his brushstrokes acquired a greater fluency and gestural sense. Josep Armet is represented in the Prado Museum and in the Provincial Museum of Girona, among other public and private collections.