Mariano Fortuny

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For other uses, see Mariano Fortuny (disambiguation).
Mariano Fortuny
Portrait of Mariano Fortuny (1867), by Federico Madrazo. National Art Museum of Catalonia.
BornJune 11, 1838
Reus
DiedNovember 21, 1874 (aged 36)
Rome
OccupationsArtist, painter
SpouseCecilia de Madrazo
ChildrenMariano, María Luisa

Mariano Fortuny y Marsal (Reus, June 11, 1838 – Rome, November 21, 1874) was a Spanish painter, watercolorist and engraver. Along with Eduardo Rosales, he is considered one of the most important Spanish painters of the 19th century after Goya.

Biography

His full name was "Mariano José María Bernardo Fortuny y Marsal." He was orphaned at the age of six and was raised by his grandfather, who was his guardian and his greatest supporter in his early years and youth, and who encouraged his artistic training with the Reus painter Domènec Soberano. He received a small amount of financial help from two clergymen of Reus. While still a child, Fortuny also worked with the silversmith and miniaturist goldsmith Antoni Bassa, who would influence the meticulousness that would later characterize his painting.[1]

Training in Barcelona

In 1852 he moved to Barcelona with his grandfather. There he began working in the workshop of the sculptor Domènec Talarn, who, pleased with his young pupil's progress, obtained for him a small pension from the Obra Pía and free enrollment at the La Lonja School of Fine Arts, where he would receive formal training for the first time. His teachers at the School were Pablo Milà y Fontanals, Luis Rigalt and Claudio Lorenzale, some of them strongly influenced by the so-called "Nazarene purism."[2]

First trip to Rome

In 1858 he went to Rome for the first time with a pension from the Provincial Council of Barcelona, and there he befriended other Spanish artists in the city, such as Eduardo Rosales and Dióscoro Puebla. This pension came with a strict condition: Fortuny had to send some of his works to the Provincial Council on a regular basis to demonstrate his progress and justify his stay.

In Rome he also met several Italian artists; among them, Attilio Simonetti (1843–1925) became his disciple and close friend. At the same time, he attended Lorenzale's private school, where his taste for romanticism developed along broader lines.

Morocco

In 1860 the First Moroccan War broke out, and the Provincial Council of Barcelona commissioned Fortuny to travel to that country to serve as a graphic chronicler of the conflict, together with Pedro Antonio de Alarcón. There he joined, as a painter, the regiment of General Juan Prim, who was also a native of Reus. His arrival in those lands was recorded on February 12, 1860, and he began his work as chronicler of the events.

Africa was a revelation for Fortuny, who was dazzled by the North African light and captivated by the open plains, the lights and the inhabitants of Morocco, even going so far as to learn some Arabic in order to fit in better. From that moment on he freed himself from conventions and academicism, feeling intensely drawn to Oriental subjects. As a result of that stay, Fortuny painted some of the most significant works of his output, such as The Battle of Tetuán (National Art Museum of Catalonia, Barcelona), as well as landscapes in which he applied all the technical innovations he was adding to his painting, such as North African Landscape (Carmen Thyssen Museum Málaga), through which he manages to give a deceptively inconsequential-looking composition an intense atmospheric sense of full sunlight.[3] Fortuny likewise became interested in Arab picturesqueness, from which he would draw inspiration from that time onward in the rest of his work, most notably in his later work The Odalisque.

Once the Moroccan war ended with the signing of peace with Spain, Fortuny returned to Spain. He settled for a time in Barcelona, where he formed a friendship with the Madrazo family, whose daughter, Cecilia de Madrazo, would become his wife. Back in Rome, he attended the French Academy of Fine Arts at the Villa Medici, where he began the sketches for his work The Battle of Tetuán.

Later, in September and October 1862, he asked the Provincial Council of Barcelona to let him return to Africa to study the light of the place, in exchange for sending some works that he would produce during his stay in Morocco. This trip had a great influence on his style after his return. His works took on an Oriental style, best seen in his work "Queen María Cristina Reviewing the Troops," commissioned by the Duke of Riánsares.

Success

Fortuny's wife, Cecilia de Madrazo, portrayed by her father, Federico de Madrazo.

After his return to Europe he went back to Rome. He married Cecilia de Madrazo, daughter of the painter Federico de Madrazo and sister of the painter Raimundo de Madrazo, with whom Fortuny would form a close friendship and with whom he shared a fondness for bullfighting. This art form fascinated the painter, who was captivated by its visual qualities and impressed by the mixture of color and ritual drama, elegance and brutality of the bullfighting world. Works such as Bullfight. Wounded Picador (Carmen Thyssen Museum Málaga) of 1867 leave behind the painter's characteristic preciousness in order to capture, with a very keen sense of instantaneous movement, the sense of brute force and unbridled drama of the protagonists.[4]

La vicaría, 1870 (MNAC in Barcelona).

Shortly afterward he painted one of his most famous pictures: La vicaría (The Vicarage; National Art Museum of Catalonia, Barcelona), supposedly inspired by the vicarage of his parish in Madrid, although many identify it as the vicarage of the Priory Church of Saint Peter in Reus. It is considered the climax of his career. It sums up all the characteristic aspects of his work: the meticulousness and precision of his line, the methodical use of color and the exhaustive study of the proper use of light. Théophile Gautier praised the work extraordinarily, which helped to increase his fame. The art dealer Adolphe Goupil, with whom Fortuny had signed an exclusive contract in September 1866, bought the painting for 70,000 francs and refused to exhibit it for fear of damaging it, until he resold it for 250,000 francs.

The subsequent dissemination of his works The Print Collector and Fantasy on Faust would finally catapult his work to definitive success.

Around 1870 Fortuny moved to Paris, where he studied the works in the Louvre Museum and the Luxembourg Museum, taking a particular interest in artists such as Horace Vernet, Eugène Fromentin, Alexandre Decamps and, above all, Eugène Delacroix. That year he exhibited several works in the Paris gallery of Adolphe Goupil. This exhibition was praised by several critics, such as Théophile Gautier, and was a key step in his international recognition.

In 1868 the Fortunys settled in Granada, where Mariano would paint various works and to which he would attract some of his friends from Paris, such as Martín Rico, Jules Worms and the Bilbao-born Eduardo Zamacois (who ultimately died in Madrid before arriving).

Last years and death

The Battle of Tetuán, 1863–1873 (MNAC in Barcelona).
Resting place of Fortuny's heart in Reus.

Fortuny traveled briefly to London, and then to Naples and the small town of Portici, in southern Italy. At that time he was showing symptoms of depression; commercial success had raised him to an enviable social and economic position, but his clientele demanded a type of painting that prevented him from evolving. In May 1874 he returned to Paris intending to break off his relationship with Goupil. Finally, on November 9, 1874, he returned to Rome, where he died on November 21 of a stomach hemorrhage caused by an ulcer.

In April 1875, the paintings still in his studio and the various objects Fortuny had gathered in his private collection were auctioned at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris, already fetching exorbitant prices at that time.

Old Man Naked in the Sun, 1863 (Prado Museum), Madrid.

Despite his death at the age of thirty-six, his style and the technical virtuosity of his work define him as a great painter who left an indelible mark on an entire generation of European painters. He cultivated a precious figurative style, attentive to details and the play of light, rendered with astonishing precision through a seemingly free and spontaneous brushstroke. But commercial success and the demands of his dealer Goupil held back an evolution that he desired, and which could have revolutionized Spanish painting had he lived. His last works, such as Nude on the Beach at Portici and The Painter's Children in a Japanese Salon (both in the Prado Museum), point toward this new direction.

His heart was buried in Reus, his hometown, in the Priory Church of Saint Peter. Also in Reus, his name was given to the city's main theater (the Fortuny Theater, still in existence), to a square (the Plaza del Pintor Fortuny, better known as Plaza del Condesito, after the protagonist of one of the master's most popular watercolors) and later to an avenue.

His son Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo was a notable painter, set designer and designer.

Main works

The Odalisque, 1861 (MNAC in Barcelona).
Bullfight. Wounded Picador, c. 1867. Oil on canvas mounted on aluminum, Carmen Thyssen Museum Málaga.

See also

Notes

References

  1. ↑ Torres González 2008: p. 11
  2. ↑ Torres González 2008: pp. 12-13
  3. ↑ Moreno Lourdes, Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga Colección, 2014, pp. 210-211.
  4. ↑ Moreno Lourdes, Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga Colección, 2014, pp. 208-209

Bibliography

  • GONZÁLEZ LÓPEZ, Carles and Montserrat MARTí AYXELÀ. Mariano Fortuny Marsal. Barcelona: Diccionari Ràfols, 1989, 2 vols.
  • TORRES GONZÁLEZ, Begoña. Fortuny: un mundo en miniatura. Madrid: Libsa, 2008. ISBN 9788466214926
  • VIVES, Rosa. Fortuny, gravador: estudi crític i catàleg raonat. Reus: Associació d'Estudis Reusencs, 1991. ISBN 847935061X (in Catalan)
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