At the Viceroys

Artist: Mariano Fortuny
Title: At the Viceroys, Detail 1870
Size: 60 x 93.5 cm
Medium: Oil on canvas
Location: Museum del Arte, Barcelona
Spanish Orientalist

Antiquaries

Antiquaries

Title: Antiquaries 1863
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 47.0 x 66.3 cm (18 1/2 x 26 1/8 in.)
Location: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Odalisque

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The Anchorite- Saint Jerome in the Wilderness 1869

Artist: Mariano José Maria Bernardo Fortuny y Carbó
Title: The Anchorite- Saint Jerome in the Wilderness 1869
Size: 34.2 x 46.5 cm (13 7/16 x 18 5/16 in.)
Medium: Etching, aquatint, and drypoint
Location: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Spanish Orientalist

Musketeer

Musketeer

Artist: Mariano José Maria Bernardo Fortuny y Carbó
Title: Musketeer
Size: 28.9 x 21 cm (11 3/8 x 8 1/4 in.)
Medium: Pen and ink drawing
Location: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Spainish Orientalist

Tomb in North Africa

Tomb in North Africa

Artist: Mariano José Maria Bernardo Fortuny y Carbó
Title: Tomb in North Africa 1869
Size: 15.8 x 23.5 cm (6 1/4 x 9 1/4 in.)
Medium: Oil on paperboard
Location: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Spanish Orientalist

Idyll, 1868

Idyll

Mariano Fortuny Marsal
Idyll, 1868
Oil on canvas/huile sur toile
Size ?
Spanish Orientalist

A burro on the Patio

A Burro on the Patio

Artist: Mariano José Maria Bernardo Fortuny y Carbó
Title: A burro on the Patio 1874
Size: 24.5 x 37.5 cm
Medium: oil on canvas
Location: Private Collection
Spanish Orientalist

Moroccan Man

Signed bottom right Fortuny/ R. 1869
Moroccan Man/Un Marocain, 1869
Watercolor on paper, 1869
32 x20cm Watercolor on paper

("...this watercolour serves as a sort of preview of the brilliant luminosity that wll be seen in the works executed after the painter´s visit to Granada in 1870...The figure is shown leaning against a light coloured wall...Fortuny´s mastery in the representation of varied textile as well as in the flesh tones of the figure is clearly manifest in this piece...this composition can be considered among the masterpieces of the Catalan painter in watercolour medium." Source: Joan Miquel Llodrá Grandes Genios del Arte Contemporáneo Español - El Siglo XX FORTUNY p. 84)

This translated text and image have been kindly provided by Carlos Ygoa.

The Moment of Lecture

The Moment of Lecture

Artist: Mariano Fortuny Marsal
Title: The Moment of Lecture
Medium: Oil on Cardboard
Size:41.5 x 55 cm
Location: National Gallery of Armenia

Bullfight

Bullfight

Artist: Mariano Fortuny Marsal
Title: Bullfight? 1867
Medium: Oil on ?
Size: 80.5 x 140.7 cm
Location:
Spanish Orientalist

The Court of the Alhambra, 1871

Mariano Fortuny Marsal
The Court of the Alhambra, 1871
Oil on canvas/huile sur toile
29 1/2 x 23 1/8 inches (75 x 59 cm)
Spanish Orientalist

Study

Study

Signed? Mariano Fortuny Marsal
Study 1878
oil on canvas/huile sur toile
Size 46x76 cm
Location: National Museum of Catalunya
Spanish Orientalist

The Bull-Fighter's Salute

The Bullfighter's Salute


The Bull-Fighter's Salute, 1869
Signed, lower right: Fortuny
Oil on canvas/ huile sur toile
61x50.2cm


The bull-fighter salutes the crowd after having killed the bull. This may be a depiction of the bull-ring in Madrid, and the figure could be a portrait. It is one of a small number of scenes of this type executed by the artist and probably originates from one of his trips to Spain in 1867/8 and 1870/2.

The painting was possibly commissioned in Paris in 1869; said to have been painted in 1869. It is probably identifiable as a picture sent by the artist for exhibition and sale in London in 1873.

Mariano Fortuny's paintings video

This video about Mariano Fortuny's paintings was created by Alejandro Cabeza and can be found at You Tube

The Battle of Tetuan

Mariano Fortuny Marsal
The Battle of Tetuan, 1862-1864 Rome
Oil on Canvas/huile sur toile
Size?
Location?
Spanish Orientalist

Thought to be the finest Spanish painter of the nineteenth century after Francisco de Goya, Fortuny occupied a prominent place on the art scene of the period. Educated at the Llotja school, he completed his training in Rome on a grant from the Barcelona City Council, an institution which commissioned various works from him about the intervention of Catalan volunteers in the Spanish-Moroccan War that had broken out in 1859. For that reason Fortuny travelled to Tetuan at the beginning of 1860 and to Tangiers in 1862. The final result of the works in Morocco were a brace of unfinished canvases in which he depicted two of the most important clashes of the African campaign. The first, The Battle of Tetuan, a work of great size and in a format totally inhabitual in the artistic praxis of Fortuny, remained in his Rome studio, where it became a true emblem, until it was acquired on the painter's death in 1874 by the Barcelona Provincial Council. The second, The Battle of Wad-ras, is currently to be found in the Museo del Prado.

The fact that Fortuny did not finish The Battle of Tetuan and that the final result was very uneven and somewhat unhappy demonstrates the lack of motivation of the painter, who became increasingly aware that a history painting conceived within the genre's conventional parameters and characteristic stereotypes was at something of a remove from his painterly aspirations and his creative sensibility. On the other hand, notwithstanding the shortcomings of the staging that a grande machine required, the canvas is strangely compelling, given that it contains a visual poetics which paradoxically converts its compositional heterodoxy into one of the artist's chief attainments and merits.Source: National Museum of Art Catalonia

Children in Japanese Hall

Children in Japanese Hall

Signed Mariano Fortuny Marsal
Children in Japanese Hall
Oil on Canvas/toile sur huile
Size: (44 x 93 cm)
Spanish Orientalist

This painting is without doubt a small jewel. Though, because of its size it might be considered a minor work, it is actually one of his most brilliant. The painter, the first Spaniard to become a trully cosmopolitan artist, enjoyed international fame and earned a large number of commissions throughout his short life. However in this small work -Fortuny was certainly a specialist in small fomats- he wasn't working "on commission". He painted it just a few months before he died, never really finishing it, and is a reflection of his search in the last years of his life to find new roads and outlets for his painting. Thus, while some elements of the scene - such as the girl's leg - are perfectly drawn with meticulous detail, other parts of the painting show such loose, separated brush strokes that one might say that this presages Impressionism. The children in the painting are Mariano and Maria Luisa, the product of his marriage to Cecila Madrazo, the daughter of Federico Madrazo. Source: Prado Museum, Madrid

Arabe Assis

Mariano Fortuny Marsal Arabe Assis
etching and aquatint on paper

Portrait of a Girl

Mariano Fortuny y Marsal
Portrait of a Girl, c. 1860
pencil and watercolor on paper
Spanish Orientalist

An Ecclesiastic, ca. 1874

Signed Fortuny/74
An Ecclesiastic, ca. 1874
oil on panel/huile sur panneau
7 1/2 x 5 1/8 in. (19 x 13 cm)
Spanish Orientalist

The cosmopolitan Catalan painter visited Paris and London and worked at Portici near Naples during the last year of his life. Fortuny y Marsal's late works reflect an interest in light, a distinctive use of color, and an awareness of current international trends, including the influence of Japanese art on the West. Fortuny y Marsal worked closely with colleagues in Spain, France, and Italy. Not only was he a brilliant technician, but he proved to be remarkably receptive to progressive trends. This expressive image of an ecclesiastic in rose-colored robes posed against a vermilion background, demonstrates Fortuny y Marsal's audacious use of color. Source: The Walters Art Museum

Odalisque/Odalisca, 1862

Mariano Fortuny Marsal
Odalisque/Odalisca, 1862
Oil on canvas/huile sur toile
Spanish Orientalist

Books about Mariano Fortuny Marsal

Books about Mariano Fortuny Marsal

1. Fortuny: [Sketches of his life and works by various writers] (Masters in art. A series of illustrated monographs) by Mariano José María Bernardo Fortuny y Marsal (Unknown Binding - 1910)

2. Mariano Fortuny Marsal, Mariano Fortuny Madrazo: Grabados y dibujos (Unknown Binding - 1994)

3. Mariano Fortuny Marsal (Maestros del arte de los siglos XIX y XX) by Carlos Gonzalez (Unknown Binding - 1989)

4. Les orientalistes de l'école espagnole, ARC Edition

A Summer Day, Morocco

Mariano Fortuny Marsal
A Summer Day, Morocco
Oil on canvas/huile sur toile
10 x 25 7/8 inches (25.4 x 66 cm)

Muleteer

Mariano Fortuny Marsal
Muleteer
etching print

The Cafe of the Swallows,1868

The Cafe of the Swallows1868

Mariano Fortuny Marsal
The Cafe of the Swallows,1868

The Moor

Mariano Fortuny Marsal The Moor
The Moor, before 1863
Watercolor on heavy cream wove paper/ aqualrelle sur papier
16x9.31in. (40.7x23.6cm)
Spanish Orientalist

Arabian Rider in Tangiers

Mariano Fortuny Marsal
Arabian Rider in Tangiers/ Caballero árabe en Tanger, 1867
Oil
45 x 28.5 cm.

Snake Charmer, 1869

Mariano Fortuny Marsal
Snake Charmer/Encantador de serpientes, 1869
Oil
58.5 x 124.5 cm.
Spanish Orientalist

At the Gate of the Seraglio

Signed lower left 'Fortuny'
At the Gate of the Seraglio, circa 1870
Oil on panel/huile sur panneau
10x7.75in 25.4x19.68cm)

Scene in Marocco

Mariano, Fortuny Marsal
Scene in Marocco,
watercolor on paper/aquarelle sure papier
9.16x2in (90 x 51 mm)
Spanish Orientalist

Two Morocceans

Two Morocceans Study

Tapestry Merchant Detail

Tapestry Merchant Detail/ Le marchand de tapis
Signed: M. Fortuny 1870
watercolor on paper/ aquarelle sur papier
30x20in/ 59x85cm

Biography of Mariano Fortuny

Fortuny was born at Reus on the 11th of June 1838. Due to the untimely death of his parents, the 12 year old child lived with his grandfather, who, in addition to being a joiner by trade, modelled and colored wax figures to sell them. Fortuny took an active part, modelling and painting many of these figures. In 1852, provided with a recomendation and with charity that the sculptor Domingo Talarn (1812-1902) had obtained for them, grandfather and grandson travelled by foot to Reus in Barcelona so that Fortuny could enter at the school of Fine Arts of Llotja. He entered the Academy of Barcelona and worked there for four years under Claudio Lorenzale (1789-1869)and in March 1857 he gained a scholarship from the Provincial Delegation of Barcelona that entitled him to complete his studies in Rome, where he went in 1858.


There, he studied the paintings of Raphael and was exposed to the Vatican and the many artistic richess of that city. He attended the classes of the Chigi Academy, came in contact with other Spanish painters and quickly obtained great prestige in the world of painting. It is thanks to an order by the Delegation of Barcelona that he had his first contact with Orientalism.

With the outbreak of the war between Spain and the emperor of Morocco, Fortuny, was given the responsability to go to Morocco as a journalist, to record through drawings and paintings certain episodes of the war. The expedition lasted for about six months. Fortuny drew and sketched all that he saw in Marocco: people, animals, places, landscapes, etc. It is from there that his new pictorial career was born. He was so dazzled by the African light that it permanently affected the whole course of his subsequent artistic development.

He returned to Spain in the summer of 1860, and was commissioned by the city of Barcelona to paint a large picture of the capture of the camps of Muley-el-Abbas and Muley-el-Hamed by the Spanish army. After making a large number of studies he went back to Rome, and began the composition on a canvas fifteen metres long; but though it occupied much of his time during the next few years, he never finished it.

He busied himself instead with a wonderful series of nearly two hundred orientalist works in either oil or watercolor. Pictures, mostly of no great size, in which he showed an astonishing command over vivacities of technique and modulations of color. He visited Paris in 1868 and shortly afterwards married the daughter of Federico Madrazo "Cécilia De Madrazo" , the director of the royal museum at Madrid. Another visit to Paris in 1870 was followed by a two years stay at Granada, but then he returned to Rome, where he died somewhat suddenly on the 21st of November 1874 from an attack of malarial fever, contracted while painting in the open air at Naples and Portici in the summer of 1874.

The work which Fortuny accomplished during his short life is distinguished by a superlative facility of execution and a marvellous cleverness in the arrangement of brilliant hues, but the qualities of his art are those that are attainable by a master of technical resource rather than by a deep thinker. His insight into subtleties of illumination was extraordinary, his dexterity was remarkable in the extreme, and as a colorist he was vivacious to the point of extravagance. At the same time in such pictures as La Vicaria and Choosing a Model, and in some of his Moorish subjects, like The Snake Charmers and Moors playing with a Vulture, he showed himself to be endowed with a sensitive appreciation of shades of character and a thorough understanding of the peculiarities of a national type. His love of detail was instinctive, and he chose motives that gave him the fullest opportunity of displaying his readiness as a craftsman.

See Davillier, Fortuny, sa vie, son euvre, sa correspondance, &c. (Paris, 1876) ; C. Yriarte, Fortuny (Artistes célèbres series) (Paris, 1889). (A. L. B.)

Source: Entry on the artist in the 1911 Edition Encyclopedia.

1860 Portrait of a Girl
1861 Odalisque
1862 Odalisque
1863Antiquaries
1863 before The Moor
1867 Arabian Riders in Tangiers
1867 Bullfight
1868 Idyll
1868 The Cafe of the Swallows
1869 Snake Charmer
1869 Tomb in North Africa 1869
1869 Anchorite
1869 A Maroccean
1869 Bullfighters Salute
1870 The Tapestry Merchant
1870 At the Gate of the Seragalio
1870 At the Viceroys
1871 Court of the Al Hambra
1874 Arab Chief
1874 An Ecclesiastic
1874 Burro on the Patio 1874
1878 Study


? Arabe Assis
? A Summer Day Morocco
? Battle of Tetuan
? Children at Japanese Hall
? Musketeer
? Scene in Marocco
? Moment of Lecture
? The Muleteer

Arab Chief

Arab Chief by Mariano Fortuny y Marsal (Spanish, 1838-1874)
Oil on canvas
48 3/8 x 31 3/8 in (122.8 x 79.7cm)
Painted in 1874

Ever since his first sojourn in Morocco in 1860, Fortuny always felt drawn by oriental themes and especially by the strong light of Northern Africa. His Moroccan stay marked a profound turn in the painting style of the master, working more and more in a luministic style, which Sorolla would inherit later.

Fortuny combined in this canvas a sharp chiaroscuro by situating his figure in a strong light, and his usual interest in rendering with minute precision all the details we see in the weapons and textile. In this way he was able to showcase his perfect draughtsmanship which the Catalan painter elevated to extremely high levels. There seems to be a clear desire on the part of the artist to endow the figure with a certain historical truth based more on ethnographic realism rather than the stereotyped images created by other European travellers.

This Image and translated text have been kindly provided by Carlos Ygoa. (Source: Joan Miquel Llodrà,Grandes Genios del Arte Contemporáneo Español – El siglo XX, FORTUNY p. 126)