José Mongrell

JOSÉ MONGRELL TORRENT (Valencia, 1870 - Barcelona, 1937).
"Waiting for Fishing", 1921.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower left corner.
It has a small patch in the central right area.
Measurements: 130 x 104 cm; 148 x 120 cm (frame).
José Mongrell studied at the School of Fine Arts of San Carlos in Valencia, where he was a disciple of Ignacio Pinazo and Joaquín Sorolla. He gained artistic renown thanks to his participation in numerous competitions and exhibitions in Madrid and Barcelona. In 1897 he produced, with great success, the bullfighting poster for the Feria de San Jaime in Valencia, and in fact his poster for the Valencia July Fair of 1912 was reissued in 1971 on the occasion of the centenary of these festivities. He obtained a teaching post at the San Jorge School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, where he lived for the rest of his life. Of particular note from this period is the work he did for the Palace of the Generalitat de Catalunya, in charge of the Diputació de Barcelona, as well as his portrait of King Alfonso XIII. He also produced mosaics in the Art Nouveau style, such as those for the great arch of the Mercado de Colón and the façade of the Estación del Norte, both in Barcelona. Mongrell devoted himself to genre scenes, portraits and landscapes, and was a master of capturing the instant, giving his scenes vitality and dynamism through bright, naturalistic colours and light. Traditionally pigeonholed as a disciple of Sorolla, Mongrell, however, only learned from the master that which helped him to extend his art. The painter developed his work somewhere between regionalism and modernism, but a certain French-influenced symbolism can also be seen in his work. In fact, Mongrell was characterised by his emphasis on content, attributing to the image a meaning that went beyond pure appearance. At a time when grand, idealistic and dramatic historical compositions prevailed, Mongrell developed a style of painting concerned with depicting the past and present from an everyday, gentle and picturesque perspective, generally far removed from the grandiloquence and theatricality of academic history painting. Despite his technical mastery, Mongrell did not, like others, fall into a refined mannerism at the service of an inconsequential subject matter, but developed a fully personal language, characterised by its dynamism and expressive freedom. José Mongrell is currently represented in the Museo de Bellas Artes San Pío V and the Museo Nacional de Cerámica y de Artes Suntuarias González Martí in Valencia, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Asturias, Badajoz and Pontevedra, the Museo Nacional de Arte de Cataluña, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Museo de La Habana and the Museo de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, among others.
The mastery of Mongrell's luminism, a key painter for understanding Valencian Impressionism, is demonstrated in the present canvas. In it the artist gives us one of his favourite themes, the costumbrista, which unites a coastal landscape with everyday scenes of daily life, featuring two popular women captured with a dignity that puts them on a par with the ancient classical heroes. This is perfectly visible in the present work, in which our gaze is irremediably caught by the magnetic expression of what appears to be a mother and daughter depicted in Mongrell's humble style. The mother, dressed in the folk costume of Valencian fishermen, gazes into the distance, waiting for the catch, while the daughter is inside the boat, waiting for her mother's orders. The figures appear in the foreground, occupying most of the pictorial surface, standing out against a magnificently worked beach landscape, the tones of which seem to echo the colours of the figures' clothes.