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Prado Museum Presents Fortuny and the Splendour of Spanish Watercolours

A group of watercolours by Fortuny and his followers is on display at the Prado on view through 4 September 2011.

A new temporary display at the Prado offers a selection of works from the Museum’s 19th-century collections, shown in the “collections presentation room”. This space has been designed to allow for changing displays of 19th-century works that are not normally exhibited to the public and which have been selected for their exceptional quality and interest. Taking advantage of this new gallery, which is located at the end of the 19th-century section, the Museum is now presenting a particularly fine group of watercolours by the great Catalan master Mariano Fortuny and his pupils and followers. Entitled Fortuny and the Splendour of Spanish Watercolours in the Prado, it features thirteen works by the best Spanish watercolourists of the 19th century, revealing the peak of technical perfection that they attained in this technique. The display offers an exceptional opportunity to see these works, given that they are not on permanent display due to the delicate materials of which they are made.

While watercolour was a medium of artistic expression used throughout the 19th century, the highpoint of this technique was reached in Spain with the work of Mariano Fortuny (1838-1874), whose prominence in the international art world of his day led other Spanish artists to emulate all the aspects of his work that had brought him fame. Like many of his contemporaries, Fortuny used watercolour to capture his impressions and explore ideas. Above all, however, he used it for finished works of a highly pictorial nature that reveal the same remarkable quality and virtuoso technique as his best paintings in oil. As a result, collectors and art dealers of the day esteemed these works as much as his most exquisitely painted and highly-prized oils.

After Fortuny’s premature death many of his Spanish followers continued to produce watercolours of a notably painterly type, although by the end of the century they had increasingly evolved towards an emergent naturalism. Together with some of Fortuny’s most exquisite watercolours, the Prado has outstanding examples in this technique by his followers, reflecting their wide-ranging interests, from Orientalist figures to landscape.

Image: Mariano Fortuny y Marsal (1838-1874), Menippus, copy of Velázquez, 1866. Watercolour on paper, 620 x 470 mm. Ramón de Errazu Bequest, 1904 [D-7416]

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