Abandoned palace

"Santiago Rusiñol (Barcelona, 1861 - Aranjuez, 1931) set off to Granada for the third time in December 1897 accompanied by the painter and good friend, Ramon Pichot, and Genís Muntaner, his valet in Sitges who used to look after Cau Ferrat in Rusiñol’s absence.
The final result was about 40 canvases with the gardens of Granada –very especially the gardens in Generalife- as the great protagonists.
The artist felt a special predilection for five paintings that were included among the ones he did not want to sell. This is proven by the fact that two of them hang today in Cau Ferrat: one is this one and the other is Interior del Palau de Víznar, which can be seen today in the Fountain Room.
The five paintings were painted between February and March, in Víznar, a small village on the outskirts of Granada. They all had the same setting: the Palacio de Cuzco, an old Episcopal mansion built at the end of the 18th century. When he saw the house surrounded by the spacious gardens the artist was amazed by the extraordinary feeling of solitude and abandonment the place transmitted, the same sensation that people feel today when they view the painting.
The weeds among the shrubs, the empty pond and partly erased sgraffito, the broken windows… All the details provide the perfect setting for melancholy, and speak about the unavoidable passing of time."