Isidro Nonell Barcelona 1873-1911

Art, 'Isidre Nonell', 1933-34, p. 346, illustrated
Carolina Nonell, Isidro Nonell: Su vida y su obra, Madrid, 1963, p. 213, catalogued, as Gitana; plate XXXIII, illustrated
Gazeta del Arte, Año I, no. 4, Barcelona, 15 June 1973, pp. 16-17, illustrated in colour
Enric Jardí, Nonell, Barcelona, 1985, p. 306, no. 65, catalogued, as Cabeza de gitana; p. 97, illustrated

Nonell’s representation of the Gypsy figure not only became a motif of singular importance to the painter and one that would come to dominate his oeuvre, but also an image of social deprivation that, above all other, defines the liberal generation of artists, writers and intellectuals that congregated at Els Quatre Gats in Barcelona to champion Cataluña’s Modernista movement.

Nonell’s interest in society’s outcasts derived in part from his friendship with Juli Vallitjana, a fellow member of the Colla del Safrá (a group of plein air painters whose number also included Joaquín Mir and Ricardo Canals; see lots 200 & 221). Vallitjana subsequently gave up painting in order to devote his time to studying gypsies and their language.  Inspired by Vallitjana’s writings and familiar with the scathing satire of such artists as Daumier, Forain and Steinlen, vagabonds, beggars and destitutes became Nonell’s favourite subjects.

His first public exhibition of such marginalised figures took the form of a set of drawings titled Cretins de Bohi from Caldes de Bohi in the Pyrenees. Published in the Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia in 1896, Nonell followed them two years later with the series España después de la guerra that he exhibited at Els Quatre Gats and which described in vivid detail the human cost of war.

It was in Paris, however, that Nonell’s work received due critical appraisal.  Travelling to Paris with Ricardo Canals in 1897, the two shared a studio high on the Butte de Montmartre, a venue that soon became the headquarters of the ‘bande catalan’.  Nonell’s drawings were shown at both the Salon des Beaux-Arts and at the Barc de Boutteville, winning him recognition not enjoyed in his native Barcelona.  Picasso had already been attracted to the Gypsy theme (fig.1), and it was directly to Nonell’s studio that Picasso and Casagemas made their way on their arrival in Paris in 1900.

During the next decade, Nonell painted increasingly in oils and regularly showed his work to great acclaim in Paris. It was not until his major retrospective at the Galeries del Fayans Català in 1910 (fig. 2) however, where the present work was shown, that he received critical acceptance for his oeuvre in his native Barcelona.

Fig. 1, Pablo Picasso, Lola in a Spanish Dress, 1899, oil on canvas, The Cleveland Museum of Art.

Fig. 2, The 1910 Galeries Fayans Català exhibition label on the reverse of the present work.