Francesc Miralles

FRANCESC MIRALLES I GALAUP (Valencia, 1848 – Barcelona, 1901).
“A Game of Croquet in a Parisian Garden.”
Watercolor on paper.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 27 x 21 cm; 40 x 34 cm (frame).

The scene is a striking example of the work of Francesc Miralles i Galaup, who is particularly renowned for his depictions of the elegant lifestyle of the Parisian bourgeoisie in the second half of the 19th century. Set in a garden, the composition shows several figures engaged in a game of croquet, an outdoor pastime associated with the leisure activities of the upper classes. Here, Miralles displays some of the most characteristic features of his artistic style: female figures in refined attire, attention to hats and fabrics, social scenes set in parks and gardens, and a gentle, sophisticated perspective on the society of his time. The watercolor, applied with light, transparent brushstrokes, is particularly well-suited to capturing the atmospheric luminosity and the rich colors of the dresses, highlighting the intense blue of the central figure and the reddish and pinkish tones of her companion. The spontaneity of the technique, combined with the scene’s almost instantaneous quality, brings the work closer to the modern sensibility that emerged in Paris during the final decades of the 19th century. Miralles’s stay in the French capital, where he spent a significant part of his career, explains both the subject matter and the cosmopolitanism of an image that places bourgeois leisure at the center and particularly well encapsulates the elegant, traditional, and Parisian aspects of his body of work.

Francisco Miralles trained in Barcelona in the studio of Ramón Martí Alsina, where he was a fellow student of the members of the first generation of Catalan realists. Little remains of Miralles’s work from this early period, though the dozen or so paintings we have reveal a young painter who quickly learned to render the figure with mastery, while still showing little interest in landscape. Having settled in Paris in the mid-1860s (around 1865–66), he may have studied with Courbet on the advice of Martí Alsina, who had also trained with the French master. Due to these influences, his early style—which lasted until the late 1870s—remained vigorously realistic. Later, he would evolve toward a style characterized by feminine elegance, typical of the fin de siècle, employing a technique influenced by Fortuny. In Paris, he popularized a refined style, focused primarily on genre scenes depicting bourgeois life and high society, featuring predominantly female characters. In Paris, Miralles lived a free and carefree life, initially depending financially on his family, and later supporting himself through the sales of his paintings, which he conducted through the most prominent Parisian art dealer of the time, Goupil. At the same time, he participated in the Salon des Artistes Français between 1875 and 1896. He made several trips to Barcelona and, in fact, exhibited at the Sala Parés in that city beginning in 1877. After several years split between Paris and Barcelona, he returned permanently to Barcelona in 1893. Francisco Miralles is represented in the MACBA, the Montserrat Abbey Museum, and the Círculo del Liceo in Barcelona, as well as in major private collections.