Santiago Rusiñol

The Generalife gardens adjacent to the Alhambra were built during the reign of Muhammad III (1302-1309) and used as a country estate and summer palace of the Nasrid sultans of Granada. Its grounds contain of one of the oldest surviving Moorish gardens. Rusiñol's fascination with The Generalife began with his first visit to the Alhambra in Granada in 1887, after which ornate fountains, cypress trees, and spectacular topiaries reminiscent of Moorish architecture would dominate his paintings.

Wherever he travelled in Spain - whether to Granada, Mallorca, or La Granja - Rusiñol fell under the spell of plants and trees variously shaped by human hand, drawn to them as expressions of the traditions of the regions of Spain but also by their enigmatic forms. In 1903 he published an album of prints titled Jardins d’Espanya, combining prints of most of the works exhibited at the eponymous 1899 Paris exhibition with modernist poems by some of the most acclaimed poets of the time. His thoughts on the garden are most lyrically articulated in his elegiac poem El jardí abandonat of 1899, in which the garden comes to symbolise both Spain's proud past and its fading glory following its defeat in the 1898 Spanish–American War.