Modest Urgell

MODEST URGELL INGLADA (Barcelona, 1839 - 1919).
"Twilight landscape".
Oil on canvas, glued to board.
Signed.
Measurements: 57 x 103 cm; 69 x 120 cm (frame).

This landscape constitutes an especially representative example of the mature language of Modest Urgell, one of the great poets of the Catalan landscape of the end of the 19th century. Far from descriptive landscape painting, Urgell constructed a deeply atmospheric work, where nature becomes an emotional and symbolic setting.

In this composition, the artist places the viewer before a silent and almost uninhabited territory, dominated by a low, leaden sky that occupies a large part of the pictorial surface. The twilight -a central theme in his work- envelops the landscape in a suspended gloom, reinforcing the sensation of time standing still, so characteristic of Urgell. The humble architecture in ruins and the bare trees emerge as signs of abandonment and contemplation, recurring elements in his iconography.

Works like this one reflect the painter's constant search to capture not so much a specific place as a state of mind: melancholy, solitude and recollection.

Modest Urgell is represented in the Prado Museum, the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Maritime Museum of Barcelona, the Kunsthalle of Hamburg, the Víctor Balaguer Museum of Vilanova i la Geltrú, the Art Funds of the Caixa Sabadell and the Caixa d'Estalvis de Terrassa, the Dalí Museum in Figueras and the Provincial Museums of Girona, Palma de Mallorca and Lugo, among many other centers and institutions.