Francisco Masriera

FRANCISCO MASRIERA MANOVENS (Barcelona, 1841 - 1912).
"Orientalist portrait", 1860.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 101 x 65 cm.

The protagonist of this female portrait wears a strapless dress that matches the jewelry and headdress that adorns her hair. She holds a handmade object in her hands while she stares at the viewer in a serious and concentrated gesture. The work demonstrates the attraction that the orientalist world professed in Spanish painters.

Painter and silversmith, he began his artistic training in the workshop of his father, Josep Masriera Vidal. He then entered the School of Fine Arts of La Lonja in Barcelona, where he was influenced by the landscape painter Luis Rigalt, to finally complete his studies in Paris. As a painter he dedicated himself to detailed landscapes, usually inspired by the surroundings of San Andrés de Llavaneras, in the province of Barcelona. He participated in exhibitions in Barcelona, Madrid, Zaragoza, Munich, Berlin and many other cities. His successive trips to Paris brought him into contact with the different tendencies of French landscape painting, and he soon achieved success thanks to the works he presented at the International Exhibition in Paris (third medal) and at the National Fine Arts Exhibitions in Madrid (third medal in 1878 and 1897) and in Barcelona (first medal in 1909). He was an academician of Sciences and Arts (1873) and of the Fine Arts of Sant Jordi, and presided over the Artistic Circle. He published biographies of Catalan artists of the generation before his own, such as Luis Rigalt, Claudio Lorenzale and Francisco Miquel, as well as works on aesthetics such as "Influencia del estilo japonés en las artes europeas" (1885). He is represented in the Museo Nacional de Arte de Cataluña and the Museo del Prado among others, as well as in important international private collections.