Santiago Rusiñol

SANTIAGO RUSIÑOL (Barcelona, 1861 – Aranjuez, Madrid, 1931).
“Landscape.”
Oil on panel.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 16 x 26 cm; 24 x 33.5 cm (frame).

A painter, writer, and playwright in the Catalan language, Rusiñol was one of the leading ideologues of the Catalan Modernist movement. He trained as a student of Tomás Moragas and was a regular at the Watercolorists’ Center, of which he was one of the founders. He made his debut in 1884 at the Sala Parés in Barcelona, alongside his friends Ramón Casas and Enric Clarasó. Around that time, he took a carriage trip through Catalonia with Casas, making sketches of people and landscapes. The year 1888 marked a turning point in his career, as he embarked on three new endeavors: he published articles in *La Vanguardia*, participated in the Paris Salon, and held his first solo exhibition at the Sala Parés. The following year, 1889, Rusiñol settled in Paris, in the Montmartre neighborhood, with Utrillo, Clarasó, and Canudas. He attended the academy of the painter Henri Gervex and completed his training with Puvis de Chavannes and Carrière. The rural style he had adopted in Barcelona then gave way, and his style evolved toward naturalism. He also drew closer to the Impressionists’ thematic—rather than technical—approaches, as well as to their desire to capture a fleeting moment. In 1890, he established a connection with Sitges, where he painted some of his first courtyards and gardens—a subject that would define his later style. That same year, he held his first exhibition at the Sala Parés, alongside Casas and Clarasó. In 1890, he returned to Paris with Casas and Utrillo. At this time, he focused on depicting the area’s entertainment venues, such as the Moulin de la Galette, which would feature prominently in many of his paintings. However, in 1893 he left his studio in Montmartre and moved to the Île Saint-Louis, where he focused on the psychological study of the figure—especially the female figure—capturing the sadness, melancholy, and loneliness typical of the fin de siècle. The following year, he traveled to Italy with Zuloaga, visiting Pisa, Florence, and other towns, which allowed him to experience the works of the Primitives firsthand. Upon his return, he exhibited the paintings created during this trip in what would be his first solo exhibition at the Sala Parés. That same year, he inaugurated the Cau Ferrat in Sitges, the precursor to the current museum. In 1895, he made his first trip to Granada and began the series “Gardens of Spain.” In 1897, he produced some of his finest garden paintings, an interest that also appears in his literary work *El jardín abandonado* (*The Abandoned Garden*), where he cultivates a symbolist form of decadence. The elegant garden takes center stage as a symbol of poetry; the abandoned garden conceals a past of lost splendor. Rusiñol then traveled, seeking out gardens that would captivate him, and painted them by internalizing them, revealing his personal conception of beauty, life and death, art and reality, solitude, and the passage of time. Around this time, he exhibited in Paris at the Salon des Indépendants, the Exposition Nationale, and the gallery of Samuel Bing, the leading proponent of Art Nouveau in France. This last exhibition, a solo show held in 1899, brought Rusiñol international recognition; his success stemmed from a new vision of Spain, entirely free of clichés and imbued with authenticity. From then on, his work as a painter, novelist, and playwright flourished; he premiered notable plays in Madrid and Barcelona and held annual painting exhibitions at the Sala Parés, always alongside Casas and Clarasó. In 1908, he received the medal from the National Exhibition of Fine Arts.