Eliseo Meifrén

ELISEO MEIFRÈN ROIG (Barcelona, 1857 - 1940).
"Marina", 1888.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Slight flaws and craquelure.
Size: 60 x 120 cm; 81 x 140 cm (frame).
Eliseo Meifrén captures in this painting a subjective nature, of romantic influence. He chooses a day with an ominous sky full of clouds, looking for a cold, twilight and mysterious atmosphere that gives nature a special lyricism. There is a development of spatial depth; the space is perfectly constructed in the foreground, with calm waters that serve as a backdrop to an intermediate plane with large rocks; acting as a backdrop, a blurred and confused scene, as if covered by a dense fog. In the foreground Meifrén's brushstrokes are dense and precise, and he constructs the forms on the basis of the rich, varied chromaticism and the subtle, carefully studied changes of light and shade.
A disciple of Antonio Caba at the Barcelona School of Fine Arts, after completing his studies he spent some time in Paris, where he coincided with the public beginning of Impressionism and became acquainted with "plen air" painting. He returned to Barcelona in 1879 and that same year he won the gold medal at the Regional Exhibition in Valencia. The following year he made his individual debut at the Sala Parés in Barcelona, where he continued to exhibit regularly from then on. He was a member of the Modernist group and frequented Els Quatre Gats. Although he was also a portraitist, Meifrèn was eminently a landscape and marine painter. He was one of the discoverers of the pictorial possibilities of Cadaqués, and he also used to paint Mallorcan landscapes (he was director of the School of Fine Arts in Palma). He made several trips in search of new landscapes, especially to France, but also to the Canary Islands, Belgium, Italy and the United States. He held exhibitions in Barcelona, Madrid (1881), Chicago (1893), Paris (1899), Brussels (1910), Santiago de Chile (1910), Buenos Aires (1910), Amsterdam (1912) and San Francisco (1915), among many other cities around the world. His style began with the detailed realism that dominated the Catalan school at the end of the 19th century and gradually evolved towards Impressionism, a language that would not be fully evident in his work until his last years. Throughout his career he won numerous prizes, including the first medals at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Madrid (1906) and Barcelona (1896), the Nonell prize in Barcelona (1935), the bronze medal at the Universal Exhibition in Paris (1888) and the grand prizes at the International Exhibitions of Buenos Aires (1910) and San Diego (1916). In 1952, Barcelona City Council dedicated a retrospective exhibition to him, held at the Palacio de la Virreina. He is represented in the Museo del Prado, the Museo Nacional de Arte de Cataluña, the MACBA in Barcelona and the Thyssen-Bornemisza, among many others.