TOMÃS MORAGAS Y TORRAS (Girona, 1837 - Barcelona, 1906).
"Roman ruins".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
It has slight repainting.
Measurements: 73 x 70 cm; 94 x 91 cm (frame).
In this scene, with his particular plastic skill, Moragas takes up again the romantic genre of the ruin to propose an emotional approach to the archaeological memory.
Tomás Moragas moved to Barcelona in his youth, where he began his training working in the workshop of Jose Pomar LLaró, who introduced him to the technique of engraving and goldsmithing. Later he continued his studies at the Escuela de La Lonja, in Barcelona, where he was taught by Claudio Lorenzale and Pablo Milá Fontanals and met Jose Tapiró Y Baró and Mariano Fortuny. He then moved to Rome, where he shared a studio with Mariano Fortuny. After almost a decade in the Italian capital he went to Paris in 1866, where he settled until his definitive return to Barcelona in 1876. In Spain he was an outstanding teacher, founding the School of Watercolourists and teaching at the Sant Jordi School of Fine Arts in Barcelona and at the Academy of Arts and Crafts in Vilanova i la Geltrú, as well as his role as artistic advisor at the Universal Exhibition in Barcelona in 1888. Works by him can be found in the Museo del Prado, the MACBA, the Museo Nacional de Arte de Cataluña and the Museo de Historia de la Ciudad de Barcelona, among many others. His painting is notable for an aesthetic style that follows to some extent the aesthetics of Fortuny, with a theme of mansions, he practised a highly popular commercial style of painting, with representations of an orientalist nature, among which the work in the Barcelona Museum of Modern Art is particularly noteworthy.