Ramón Casas, Barcelona 1866-1932

Isabel Coll, Ramón Casas: Una vida dedicada al arte, Barcelona, 1999, p. 317, no. 225
Isabel Coll, Una vida dedicada al arte - Ramon Casas: Catálogo Razonado, Murcia, 2002, pp. 228 & 229, no. 221, catalogued and illustrated

Painted circa 1892-93, the present work was completed at the height of the artist's maturity as a portraitist. The subject, a beautiful young lady in elegant attire à la mode, was Casas's favourite and most recurrent motif. While the present work reveals influences of the artists with whom Casas had worked in Paris, a city he had left only a short time earlier, he was at the same time establishing his own unique style of 'modernism' and anticipating the work of successive Catalan artists such as Picasso.

Casas first began his training at the early age of 12 in the studio of Joan Vicens, a Catalán painter-decorator and portraitist. In the autumn of 1881, during a stay in Paris, he joined the atelier of Carolus Duran, the eminent portrait painter, admirer of Velázquez and Manet, and whose students included Sargent. Returning to Paris in 1890, Casas shared an apartment with Rusiñol and Utrillo and increasingly focused on views of suburban Paris and figures in interiors. The influence of Whistler and Degas remained with Casas even after he left Paris and can be seen in the reduced palette of greys and pale blues that render the minimual background and boa in the present work. These muted shades imbue the composition with a soulful melancholy, hinting at underlying preoccupations of the sitter which are otherwise revealed only by her distracted gaze. In colour and mood, the present work is a precursor of Picasso's Blue Period and may indeed have been seen by the younger artist who admired and envied Casas.

Casas's ability to render the contrasting textures of the feathered boa and the golden sheen of the sitter's evening gown is second only to his mastery at conveying his sitter's character on canvas. As a founder member of the avant garde circle Els Quatre Gats which met in the tavern of the same name in Barcelona and counted Rusiñol, Nonell and Picasso among its number, it was natural that Casas - with his sharp ability to pen a likeness - would contribute illustrations to the new literary review Pèl & Ploma set up in 1899. The exhibition of a selection of portraits by Casas in association with the publication in October 1899, for which the artist received widespread critical acclaim, confirmed Casas as one of the greatest Spanish portraitists of the nineteenth century.