Rocky Landscape

A remarkable landscape by Catalonian artist Ramón Martí Alsina, a very special figure in the art world of the 19th century, whose liberal ideology, teaching in support of renewal, and artistic production, placed him in the vanguard of realism in our country. We are able to detect in the execution of this work the artistic principles which underpinned his work, as well his enthusiasm for giving shape to the reality of exuberant and powerful nature. We see the depth of the perspective, the perfection of the composition and the majestuous panoramic framework, and we remember that in his classes he told his students that a knowledge of geometry was necessary for landscape or figure painting. In the foreground, his loose, but sure brush strokes portray the dry, rocky, rugged mountain scenery, magnificently directed towards an ideal perspective point. Along the line of the horizon and the sky, the brush strokes become blurred and the effect of distance is admirably achieved, while the cloudscape is representative of the artist’s best. Moreover, he insisted that painters should observe reality carefully in order to give it shape exactly as they perceived it, and then communicate their feelings through the composition and the subject. Of note in this landscape is the absence of any anecdote; the sole protagonism is that of Mother Earth in which man, timidly represented by a solitary traveller, lives, works and co-exists in little villages or large towns, which are always small in comparison with the size of the planet. This grandiosity was characteristic of Marti Alsina’s ardent temperament. It caused him many problems in his professional and personal life, but it was the source of these immense works of conception and artistic ambition.