Joaquín Vayreda

JOAQUÍN VAYREDA VILA (Girona, 1843 - Olot, Girona, 1894).
"Coastal village".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower corner.
Measurements: 62 x 50 cm; 85 x 74 cm (frame).

Founder of the landscape school of Olot, at the age of nine he begins his studies with Narcís Pascual, then director of the School of Drawing of Olot. He moved to Barcelona around 1860 to study philosophy, and there he continued his artistic training in the workshop of Ramón Martí Alsina. In 1865 he exhibited for the first time in the premises of the Society of Artists of Barcelona, and the following year he participated in an exhibition in the Sala Parés. In 1869 he founds in Olot the Artistic-Cultural Center, which will become a focus of renovation and experimentation against the official academicism. In 1871 he travels for the first time to Paris, and comes into contact with the Barbizon school, as well as with the first impressionists. The outbreak of the Carlist War led him to go into exile in France in 1872, where he remained for three years. On his return he resumed the activities of the Artistic Center, and Olot became a center of attraction for Catalan painters, attracted by the paintings that Vayreda exhibited in the Parés room. Works by Joaquín Vayreda are kept in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the MACBA in Barcelona, the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Víctor Balaguer Museum in Barcelona, the Art Museum of Girona and the Abbey of Montserrat.