Francisco Inglada - Portrait Of A Young Spanish Woman

Francisco INGLADA Barcelona, 1850 - 1903 Oil on canvas 56 x 43 cm (74 x 62 cm with frame) Signed top left "Inglada" Catalan painter, Francisco Inglada is one of those Spanish painters who came to work in Paris in the 1880s like Francisco Parera (in the 1880s) and Eliséo Meifren (in 1879). "The artists represented, most of them still alive, were called Beruete, Canals, Casas, Fortuny, Nonell, Pla, Rusiñol, Sorolla, Ysern, Zuloaga - each of them giving, in their own way, their vision of the French capital." (...) As for the Spanish painters - most of them are Catalan - if they desert Rome, it is not for the same chromatic reasons. Ignoring the light factor, they will be in search of the message transmitted by the French capital, prey to the fascination that this city exerted on them, which their contemporary, Paul Gsell, described in an impressive way - a vision glimpsed from Rodin's studio and the heights of Meudon." (Paris seen by Spanish painters at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, Denise Bonnaffoux, 2001) In 1886, the influential critic of Le Figaro, Albert Wolff, described Paris as the "capital of the arts", adding: "It is in art that Paris, after its disasters, has found the renewal of its European situation. [...] The siege of Paris had barely ended when foreign merchants rushed to the capital" because "nowhere could one bring together such a large collection of men who had marked the luminous phases of art" Inglada painted portraits and genre scenes, for example "A Lesson" (presented at the Fine Arts Exhibition in Barcelona in 1880), "A Study from Nature" (1871, awarded an honorable mention), "A Gypsy and a Gypsy Woman" (Girona Exhibition in 1878), or "A Lady Walking in the Countryside", "A Lady Seated in a Garden" as well as Andalusian scenes in costume. Our painting is a beautiful portrait of a young Spanish woman whose proud character is highlighted by the profile pose and the determined look, to which is added a well-bred style!