MODEST URGELL INGLADA (Barcelona, 1839 - 1919). "Landscape... Lot 45

MODEST URGELL INGLADA (Barcelona, 1839 - 1919). "Landscape with farmhouse". Oil on canvas. Signed in the lower left corner. Size: 83,5 x 130 cm; 116 x 160 cm (frame). Melancholy impregnates the sunsets of Modest Urgell, in landscapes that like the one we are dealing with transmits us the mystic projection of the artist on nature. He manages to provoke moods in the viewer through lights that dissolve, for brief moments, in harmonies of reds and siennas.Modest Urgell began his career as a theatrical actor, but the family's prohibition to follow that path led him to devote himself to painting. He studied at the Escuela de La Lonja in Barcelona, where he was a disciple of Ramón Martí Alsina, and later spent some time in Paris, where he came into contact with Gustave Courbet and became a follower of realism. During the 1960s his works were rejected at the official exhibitions in Madrid and Barcelona. In 1870 he moved to Olot, where he became acquainted with Joaquín Vayreda, the creator of the local landscape school. From then on Urgell decided to devote himself fully to landscape painting. His work focused on solitary natures and seascapes, often featuring hermitages and cemeteries, marked by a twilight, desolate and mysterious atmosphere. From 1896 he taught landscape painting at the Sant Jordi School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, and was appointed an academician in 1902. He was also the founder of the Artistic and Literary Society of Catalonia and of the Artistic and Archaeological Museum of Girona. He took part in all the editions of the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Madrid from 1864 until the year before his death, and was awarded the second medal in 1876 and 1892. He also sent his paintings to the Barcelona exhibitions, as well as to the Universal Exhibition in Paris and the international exhibitions in Munich, Brussels, Berlin, Philadelphia and Chicago. In 1892 he won prizes in all the competitions in which he took part, including the Brussels competition, in which he was the only Spaniard to win a prize. He also devoted himself to literature, with a special interest in the theatre. The sum of his two passions, art and literature, are expressed in his album "Catalunya" (1905), made up of more than a hundred drawings accompanied by texts written by himself. His landscapes have an atmosphere, colour and themes that reject the stereotype of the Mediterranean landscape, based on warm and friendly natures, with brilliant chromaticism, like windows open to southern sensuality. Urgell is represented in the Prado Museum, the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Maritime Museum of Barcelona, the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, the Víctor Balaguer Museum in Vilanova i la Geltrú, the Caixa Sabadell and Caixa d'Estalvis de Terrassa art collections, the Dalí Museum in Figueras and the Provincial Museums of Gerona, Palma de Mallorca and Lugo, among many other centres and institutions.