Dolors

This is a work that clearly belongs to Nonell’s final stage of painting, in which a placid serenity tinged, despite everything, with gravity, had replaced the painter’s initial coarse realism. It is a profile with the body almost facing towards the front, very similar in posture to that of La paloma (The Pigeon -1904) or of Lola (1909), both in the Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona. It also has the same positioning, although facing the opposite direction, of the rigorously contemporary Mujer (Woman -1910) in the Valentí Collection in Barcelona.

Stylistically, Nonell falls within the category of the best European Post-Impressionists. He seems to be an offshoot of Vincent van Gogh, with his short, nervously-repeated brush strokes, or of Toulouse‑Lautrec, with his strong, vigorously curvaceous outlines. This earned him the epithet – in no way applicable to him – of “Modernist”, in the sense of exponent of art nouveau, the decorative and deliquescent style with which Nonell’s art is conceptually in conflict. We know, from what he said himself, about his admiration for Degas, Manet and, above all, Monet, as well as Toulouse‑Lautrec and Daumier. Nevertheless, Nonell’s re-working of Post-Impressionism was deeply personal. Although his “older brothers”, the modernists, were excellent epigones of a kind of Impressionism, he was not the follower of anyone. Rather, he made a contribution to the art of his time that was absolutely his own. This was remarked upon by his companion Joaquim Sunyer, who told him in Paris in 1897 that his works, even there, were somewhat new.