Ramon Martí i Alsina

RAMON MARTÍ I ALSINA (Barcelona, 1826–1894).
“Landscape with Figures.”
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 88 × 52 cm; 108 × 73 cm (frame).

Landscape painting constitutes the most significant focus of Ramon Martí i Alsina’s body of work and the field through which he made a decisive contribution to the renewal of 19th-century Catalan painting. His interest in the direct observation of nature and in painting outdoors fostered a less conventional representation of the environment, based on visual experience, light, and the materiality of natural elements.

In this landscape, Martí Alsina alternates broad, energetic brushstrokes on the vegetation and rocks with a lighter treatment of the sky and the distant landscape. The deep greens, the ochres of the path, and the warm tones of the tree trunks create a rich chromatic gradation, while the open spaces between the treetops prevent the monumentality of the trees from closing off the composition. The work thus stands out for the boldness of its structure, the breadth of its naturalistic conception, and the artist’s ability to convey the physical presence of the landscape.

Ramon Martí i Alsina was the leading exponent of pictorial realism in Catalonia and a key figure in the modernization of Spanish landscape painting. His exposure to French painting reinforced his interest in working from life, an approach he passed on to a distinguished generation of Catalan landscape painters. It is precisely in works such as this one that we can appreciate the importance he attached to landscape as an autonomous genre and as a field for pictorial experimentation. His body of work is extensively represented at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya and the Museo Nacional del Prado.