José María Sert

JOSÉ MARÍA SERT (Barcelona, 1874 - 1945).
"Puppets." Sketch for Harrison Williams' dining room paintings, 1933.
Oil on canvas.
Another similar sketch is catalogued in "José María Sert. Su vida y su obra", Alberto del Castillo, Librería Editorial Argos S.A., fig. 65, p. 224.
Measurements: 37 x 18 cm; 49 x 28 cm (frame).
Following Alberto del Castillo's statements in his book "José María Sert. His life and work" together with Alexandre Cirici, "In 1933 José María Sert left the decoration of the dining room of the house of Mr. Harrison Williams, in New York, for whom he had already painted in 1926 the decoration of his tennis pavilion in Long Island. The theme chosen for the five panels that made up this decoration was the evocation of Spain, which the artist resolved in the form of mock balconies populated by picturesque types. The balcony scene, used in a pompous way by the great Venetian artists, had received its realist consecration with Goya, in the sense that Manet would later imitate. Sert knew how to make the theme his own, giving it a new twist, without falling into the Spanish pastiche of the current pompiers who have tried to imitate the Goyaesque solution. The character of these Sertian balconies has a lot of innocent theatrical artifice, of puppet theater, which gives a certain note of irony that cures all pedantic intonation. Thus, graceful, almost magazine style, without a hint of megalomania, the balconies of this dining room smile, with clear and varied intonations, on a gray background. Their immediate precedent is undoubtedly the balconies of the Buenos Aires roof of the swings, in the palace of Pereda, where, as here, the balcony is combined with the note of colored fabrics and a certain allusion to folkloric clothing".
Trained with Benito Mercadé and Pere Borrell, Sert was a member of the Círculo Artístico de Sant Lluc, and later a disciple of A. de Riquer. In 1900 Torras i Bages commissioned a large mural decoration for the cathedral of Vic, of which he presented sketches and preparatory canvases in 1905 and 1907 in Barcelona and Paris, of which this piece is an example. Through his exhibitions abroad, he soon acquired extraordinary prestige among the French and English aristocracy, for whom he created sumptuous decorations. In 1908 he decorated the Sala de los Pasos Perdidos of the Palace of Justice in Barcelona, and in 1910 he presented at the Salon d'Automne in Paris the mural decoration of the ballroom of the Marquis of Alella (Barcelona) and decorated the music room of the Princess of Polignac in Paris. Two years later he exhibited an important group of works at the Salon in the French capital. In the following years he worked for Queen Victoria Eugenia (Santander) and for Robert Rotschild (Chantilly).