Mariano Fortuny, the painter who wanted to hold onto time

BarcelonaLike all great artists, the power of Mariano Fortuny's (Reus, 1838 – Rome, 1874) painting remains fully relevant. "It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the artistic theme of his life was the metaphor of time," states Francesc Quílez, curator of the Fortuny Year and of the exhibition at the Salvador Vilaseca Museum in Reus. Fortuny, the observation of nature. The power of the gaze, Showing until December 14th. “In his paintings, Fortuny tries to freeze time, to hold onto it,” Quílez explains. “Obviously, it’s a futile and sterile effort, because you can’t hold onto time; it’s infallible. The only certainty is death, but aesthetically, Fortuny tries to convey that feeling, that state of mind.”

For Quílez, the enduring relevance and authenticity of Fortuny’s works lie in the fact that “he knew how to transcend his historical period.” “Interestingly, he was a painter deeply rooted in his historical time; moreover, he had a firm conviction that he was a painter situated in his historical era, but at the same time, he was able to propel himself forward and overcome that dependence to transcend his historical period and become a timeless painter,” he says.

Fortuny is one of the cornerstones of Francesc Quílez’s career, and in the exhibition It has brought to light a previously little-explored aspect of his work: the relationship he maintained with nature throughout his career. The exhibition includes some 80 works, among them paintings, drawings, and prints. Twenty percent are from private collections, such as The sword sharpener, and others come, in addition to the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC), from the Prado Museum (Hollyhocks), the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum (The bullring of Seville) and the Carmen Thyssen Museum in Malaga (North African landscape).

As Quílez says, the exhibition's route goes in crescendo Through five sections dedicated, progressively, to the details of plants and flowers and the construction of the landscape, the works on display reveal his evolution and a trait that marks Fortuny's trajectory. "Fortuny's life was subject to constant tension, an ambivalence between desire and reality. On the one hand, he had to satisfy the requests, adapted to the taste of the moment, made by the art dealer and his clientele—that is, paintings of frock coats, Orientalist paintings, in short, more commercial paintings. On the other hand, he wanted to break free from this constraint and work with absolute freedom. And, above all, what he wanted was to paint what he liked, what satisfied him," explains the curator.

Quílez finds this spontaneity in the non finito, in which Fortuny left some works unfinished. "How is it possible, and it even seems paradoxical, that an artist who has always had this image of being absolutely infallible, unyielding, without flaws, had these weaknesses and showed these vulnerabilities and left many works unfinished?" Quílez asks. Especially since this was an act "inappropriate in the context and sensibilities of the time; it was absolutely incomprehensible." Among these works are The bullring of Seville, which the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum bought last year from a Barcelona collection.

From flower to landscape

The journey begins with An interest in botany. The deconstructed landscape. Fortuny's study of nature dates back to his formative years, when he took excursions to Sarrià and Horta while studying at the Llotja art school, and one can observe how he established an "emotional connection" with painting. It is also noteworthy that he dedicated a large-scale painting to hollyhocks. "This is very representative of his interest in depicting nature," Quílez emphasizes. "Some say that this painting could be a detail from a larger work, but it would be monumental. That can't be. It's a unique case, a singular instance of his interest in representing a specific subject."

And if the best of The Battle of Tetuan Outside the sky? Although this gigantic work remains at the MNAC, the drawings and preparatory works displayed in the second section of the exhibition in Reus reveal Fortuny's fixation on representing skies.The Battle of TetuanIt is, after all, a history painting with canonical pretensions, but, as we know, Fortuny didn't succeed; he failed because he didn't adapt to the criteria of what constitutes a history painting," Quílez explains. This means that this painting "has no epic scope, conflict, Manichaeism, or heroism." The figure occupying the upper horizontal band has a very prominent role," says the curator. Furthermore, Quílez recalls the extraordinary skies in Portici's watercolors, among them... Landscape of PorticioFrom the Vida Muñoz collection. In some of them, Fortuny achieves "total abstraction, and the horizon line of the sky and the sea merge." Furthermore, in this area one can see The bullring of Seville and the watercolors Sea, with Vesuvius in the background, also owned by the Prado, and Roman ruins near Cervera, from the Reus Museum.

The protagonists of the third area are the locus amoenusThat is, "idealized places that evoke beauty, serenity, contemplation, and emotional intimacy," as Quílez explains. One of the works on display is The sword sharpener, from a Barcelona collection, which evokes an unexpected turn in Fortuny's life. "He is a painter who aspires to achieve success, to social and economic recognition. But once he achieved it, with the presentation of The vicarage In Paris in 1870, an unusual situation arose, because he renounced all the trappings of his triumph and moved to Granada, which at that time was completely on the periphery of the system. Fortuny did something like... reset"He reinvented himself and began to question himself as a painter," says Quílez.

In Granada, Fortuny became interested in depicting "lush gardens, full of water, flowers, and plants." For Quílez, who is also the author of the book Fortuny, a painter behind the shop window (Trea), these works are rather classist because they reflect the "privileged" life that Fortuny and his family could afford.

The final section is divided into two areas: Plein air experiencesdedicated to outdoor creation, and Topographic horizonsThe latter includes North African landscape, "An extraordinary work, which has a magical, surreal quality, with a great horizon," says Quílez, who sees it as a predecessor to Dalí's surrealist paintings of Cape Creus, who, in fact, was a great admirer of Fortuny.