Joaquim Vayreda

JOAQUIM VAYREDA VILA (Girona, 1843 - Olot, Girona, 1894).
"Landscape with figures".
Oil on panel.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 20 x 23 cm; 31 x 36 cm (frame).
In the present work Vayreda captures -with his personal expressive and atmospheric language- a landscape with special luminous sensibility, reflecting with success the autumn in the vegetation, with clear and brilliant colors. It is a markedly horizontal view, in which the road that crosses it stands out, clouds suspended in the sky. Vayreda manages to transmit with naturalism the solitary and bucolic atmosphere of the place. It is a naturalistic landscape, attentive to color, to the play of reflections and hallmarks, marked by a dynamic and subtle brushstroke.
Joaquim Vayreda was a Catalan painter, one of the most outstanding Catalan landscape painters of the 19th century. After his early studies in his hometown, he furthered his training in Barcelona with Martí Alsina and made stays in Paris. He founded the Artistic Center of Olot, the nucleus of the so-called Olot School of painting. His style and concept was influenced by the Barbizon school in France, and his painting evolved towards impressionism. At the age of nine he began his studies under the guidance of Narcís Pascual, then director of the Olot School of Drawing. He moved to Barcelona around 1860 to study philosophy, and there he continued his artistic training in the workshop of Ramón Martí Alsina. In 1865 he exhibited for the first time in the premises of the Society of Artists of Barcelona, and the following year he participated in an exhibition in the Sala Parés. In 1869 he founds in Olot the Artistic-Cultural Center, which will become a focus of renovation and experimentation against the official academicism. In 1871 he travels for the first time to Paris, and comes into contact with the Barbizon school, as well as with the first impressionists. The outbreak of the Carlist War led him to go into exile in France in 1872, where he remained for three years. On his return he resumed the activities of the Artistic Center, and Olot became a center of attraction for Catalan painters, attracted by the paintings that Vayreda exhibited in the Parés room. Works by Joaquín Vayreda are kept in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the MACBA in Barcelona, the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Víctor Balaguer Museum in Barcelona, the Art Museum of Girona and the Abbey of Montserrat.