Montserrat Casas

This is a remarkable portrait of the artist’s oldest sister in her youth, which is not very well-knon. It was painted during the brief period in Barcelona between a fairly irrelevant trip to Paris (summer of 1887) following his periods of forced rest in Caldetas because of some slight outbreaks of tuberculosis, and the picturesque journey he made in a cart through Catalonia made with Santiago Rusiñol in 1889.
It is a work along the lines of CarolusDurand, his master in Paris: a large vertical portrait of a woman, in the style of La dame au gant (Lady with a glove) by the latter (1869). However, the brush strokes are freer, as if reflecting a timid Impressionist influence which would still take a couple of years before openly surfacing in Casas. It is also a similar type of portrait to that of Madame X (1884) by John S. Sargent, which caused such a stir in Paris - although for reasons totally unconnected with art. In this portrait by Casas, however, the figure does not have the gracefulness of that of Durand, nor the haughtiness of that of Sargent. Rather, it is a correct portrait of a young girl of the Catalonian bourgeoisie, simple and placid.