Joaquim Vayreda

JOAQUIM VAYREDA VILA (Girona, 1843 - Olot, Girona, 1894).
"Painter a plein air".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
With label on the back of the Artistic Center of Olot: Fine Arts Exhibition of 1880.
Measurements: 54 x 86 cm; 75 x 106,5 cm (frame).

It is an intimate landscape, where the rain has just withdrawn leaving behind a washed, fresh air, full of the smell of wet earth. Vayreda situates the scene in a forest clearing, a small green meadow that opens up between tall trunks.

In the center, the painter (probably a self-portrait) works under an umbrella attached to a stick, improvised, practical, an unmistakable sign that he has not interrupted his work even during the downpour. The slanting umbrella contrasts with the solemnity of the easel: firm, dark, sunken in a ground that reflects the sky in irregular puddles.

On the puddled ground, shimmering mirrors of water mingle with islands of intensely green moss. To one side, a little further back, the painter's family watches him: the woman with a spindle in her hand, accustomed to these moments of artistic devotion, and a friend of the painter. Both are standing still, as if they do not want to disturb the artist's concentration.

The vegetation is meticulous, delicious in its variety. Everything suggests that magical moment just after the rain, when the forest breathes and the world seems to have just begun.

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.