Juan Carlos Angles

JUAN CARLOS ANGLÉS (Barcelona, ? - 1822).
"Scene of the French War".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Gilded frame with some lack on the side.
Bibliography: "Juan Carlos Anglés, neoclassical painter", by Juan Ainaud de Lasarte, editions of the Museums of Art of Barcelona, 1944.
Measurements: 65 x 85 cm; 75 x 95 cm (frame).

Although the biography of Juan Carlos Anglés is practically unknown to us, we know thanks to the existence of several theoretical and doctrinal texts that he was a member of the Real Junta Particular de Comercio de Barcelona for many years and that among his disciples López Soler and José Arrau Barba stood out. The latter referred in his book "El juramento de un artista ó Juan y Pepita" to the works of Anglés exhibited in a museum in Mercaders street in Barcelona in the following way: "the original works of Don Juan Carlos Anglés, competitor and contemporary of Flaugier, who although following the same maxims of the idealist school, composed well, had a correct drawing, a pleasant coloring and a true light-darkness, were worthy of being seen and shone by themselves". In conclusion, it can be affirmed that Juan Carlos Anglés was the best painter from Barcelona in the second decade of the 19th century and that his painting represents the transition between the neoclassical artists and the first romantic artists. In the last years of his life he was accused of Frenchness and distanced from public life.

The neoclassical painter Juan Carlos Angles gives us in this painting a scene of conflict and victory of the Napoleonic soldiers in one of their incursions into Spanish territory. The victims implore mercy to the French soldiers, who subdue the population with their weapons. The scene is dynamic, narrated from different points of view, which enriches the political reading of the War of Independence, which was contemporary to Anglés. It was a war that took place between 1808 and 1814 in the context of the Napoleonic Wars, which pitted Spain, the United Kingdom and Portugal against the French Empire, which sought to put Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte, on the Spanish throne after the abdication of Bayonne. Juan Carlos Anglés was one of the Catalan representatives of the neoclassical line influenced by the school of David and Mengs.