FRANCESC MIRALLES I GALAUP (Valencia, 1848 - Barcelona, 1901).
"Jumping over a skipping rope".
Oil on wood.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Size: 27 x 50 cm; 39 x 63 cm (frame).
This painting is a magnificent example of Miralles's language, centred mainly on costumbrista themes of bourgeois life and the fin-de-siècle high society: a bourgeois costumbrista scene, captured with an elegant style and marked atmospheric sensitivity, with a descriptive brushstroke in the textures and loose in the backgrounds, expressive and exuberant. Thus, we see a refined treatment of the environment that surrounds him, of the bourgeoisie with whom he lives, in a work marked by the precious treatment of the material, the gracefulness of his drawing and the delicacy of his lighting.
Francisco Miralles trained in Barcelona in the studio of Ramón Martí Alsina, where he was a fellow pupil of the members of the first generation of Catalan realists. Little remains of Miralles's output from this early period, although the dozen or so paintings we have tell us that he was a young painter who quickly learned to treat the figure with mastery, although he was not yet interested in landscape painting. Settled in Paris from the mid-1860s (around 1865-66), it is possible that he studied with Courbet on the advice of Martí Alsina, who also trained with the French master. Due to these influences, his youthful style, up to the late 1970s, is still vigorously realist. Later he evolved towards a style of feminine elegance, typically fin-de-siècle, with a Fortunyist-influenced technique. In Paris he popularised a refined style, centred mainly on costumbrist themes of bourgeois life and high society, mainly featuring female characters. In Paris Miralles lived a free and carefree life, at first depending financially on his family, and later supporting himself by his own means, thanks to the sales of his paintings through the most prominent dealer in Paris at the time, Goupil. At the same time, he took part in the Salon des Artistes Français between 1875 and 1896. He made several trips to Barcelona, and in fact exhibited from 1877 at the Sala Parés in that city. After several years spent between Paris and Barcelona, he returned to Barcelona for good in 1893. Francisco Miralles is represented in the MACBA, the Abbey of Montserrat and the Círculo del Liceo in Barcelona, as well as in important private collections.