Francisca Rodero y Gregory

With Caiati Old Masters, Milan;

Thereafter acquired by the present owner.

Francisca Rodero y Gregory painted this signed and dated piece in 1893, reproducing the 1874 Huyendo de la crítica (Fleeing from Criticism) by Catalan artist Pere Borrell del Caso. Rodero y Gregory presented the work at the 1897 National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Madrid, the Spanish equivalent to the Paris Salon, which served as the premier venue for artists to gain public recognition. The painting not only demonstrates Rodero y Gregory's ability to emulate her predecessors, but also her facility for intellectual playfulness.

Focusing on a young boy who seems about to escape from within the canvas, the composition explores the ambiguous relationship between pictorial and physical space. Breaking through the fictive frame and on the verge of emerging into the viewer's reality, the protagonist appears poised to leap into our world. The vivid sense of movement borders on the rebellious, suggesting that the figure's desire to escape judgment within the frame's confinement is a metaphor for art's resistance to aesthetic and critical constraints. The boy's flight can be read as a symbolic act of artistic defiance: he, like the artist, seeks to break free from criticism and convention. Yet his anxious expression hints at the futility of escape, an interpretation underscored by the alternate title under which the original was once shown: Una cosa que no pot ser (A Thing That Cannot Be).