"Friendship between Santiago Rusiñol (Barcelona, 1861 - Aranjuez, 1931) and Ramon Canudas began in 1885 through Miquel Utrillo. This friendship was growing years later, especially in the days when they both lived in Paris on the Orient Street, until the engraver death in 1892, due to tuberculosis.
He is the protagonist of a couple of portraits painted by Rusiñol among the large number he painted of his friends. The artist executed the two portraits the same year, only few months separately, when Canuda’s disease was already irreversible.
The patient’s features, with his eyes half-closed, accentuate the attitude of those who have long time assumed the imminence of death."