Miquel Blay

MIQUEL BLAY FÁBREGAS (Olot, Girona, 1866 – Madrid, 1936).
“First Cold Snaps,” 1892.
Plaster with bronze patina.
Signed and dated.
Measurements: 68 x 46 x 35 cm.

This is a model of one of the most important and iconic works of 19th-century Spanish sculpture and Catalan Modernism. Conceived by Blay in Rome in 1892, this piece represents the perfect synthesis between the dramatic emotion of Social Realism and the delicacy of Symbolism. The work depicts a weary old man and a little girl (his granddaughter) sitting together on a stone bench. The elderly man, with a distant gaze and his head bowed under the weight of time and old age, is marked by tenderness, as the little girl snuggles up against him seeking warmth and comfort. Old age is represented by a vigorously rendered anatomy, marked by the passage of time and a rigid posture that reflects the harshness of life. Childhood is depicted with soft forms, conveying helplessness, vulnerability, and affection.
The patinated plaster casting perfectly mimics bronze, allowing viewers to appreciate the fluidity of Blay’s strokes in the original clay: the wrinkled texture of the clothes, the old man’s weathered skin, and the folds of the girl’s dress, where light glides across the surface, creating evocative chiaroscuro effects in the Impressionist style.

The sculptor Miquel Blay trained in Olot, in the Christian Art workshops of Berga i Boix and with the painter Joaquín Vayreda, creating religious images. In 1888, he traveled to Rome, and a year later, he moved to Paris on a scholarship from the Provincial Council of Girona. In the French capital, he attended the Académie Julian, the École des Beaux-Arts, and the studio of Henri Michel Antoine Chapu. After three years in Paris, he spent a year and a half in Rome before returning to Olot in 1894. One of his most famous works, “First Cold Snaps,” was created in Rome and earned Blay first prize at the 1892 National Fine Arts Exhibition in Madrid. This work also won a gold medal in Barcelona in 1894, and its Modernist style influenced, in fact, an entire generation of Catalan sculptors. Back in Paris, he won a medal of honor at the Universal Exposition held there in 1900, and was named a Knight of the French Legion of Honor the following year. In 1906, Blay returned to Spain and settled in Madrid, becoming a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in 1909 and, the following year, a professor at the Madrid School of Fine Arts. He continued to exhibit his work at the National Fine Arts Exhibitions, receiving a medal of honor in 1908 for “Eclosión” (Prado). Between 1925 and 1930, he served as director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Miquel Blay’s works are currently on view at the Prado Museum, the MACBA in Barcelona, the La Garrotxa Regional Museum, the Reina Sofía National Art Museum, and others.