“Dama durmiendo”. LLUÍS MASRIERA ROSÉS

LLUÍS MASRIERA ROSÉS (Barcelona, 1872 - 1958).
"Lady sleeping".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 50 x 75 cm; 70 x 95 cm (frame).
Lluís Masriera offers us in this work the representation of a character - in this case, a woman belonging to the Catalan bourgeoisie - in a very prosaic attitude, asleep in an armchair. The scene is resolved through the contrasting treatment of the light, the framing close to photography and the austere palette.
A member of the third generation of an illustrious saga of goldsmiths and silversmiths still active today, Lluís Masriera was the son of José Masriera Manovens (1841-1912), a goldsmith and landscape painter. Although he took to painting at an early age, his training was initially oriented towards the family trade, and he was sent to study in Geneva at the age of seventeen. But his prolific and exquisite production of jewellery is only one aspect of the activity of this multifaceted and restless character. He was also a prestigious painter and playwright, as well as director of the Barcelona Academy of Sciences and an omnipresent figure in the most important cultural initiatives of his time. His career as an easel painter began around 1896, when he began to exhibit his work in official competitions in Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Buenos Aires and San Francisco, among other cities, winning several prizes. He took part in the Fine Arts Exhibitions in Barcelona from 1896 onwards, as well as in the Salon des Artistes Français. He showed his work individually in Spain, France, England and Japan. His style shows the family influence of the Masriera family, combined with the decorative effects of the art of enamelling, and he belonged to the most precious variant of pictorial modernism. Works by him such as "The Japanese Parasol" (1920, MACBA), which won him the Grand Prix at the Paris Exhibition of Decorative Arts, became widely known even outside Spain, thanks to his fanciful and symbolic compositions, with a dreamlike air, which were so popular with the clientele of the first two decades of the 20th century. Some of his works, thematic strands and stylistic phases reveal a certain influence of Catalan painters such as Lluís Graner and Laureano Barrau, as well as of the French naturalist Puvis de Chavannes. As a playwright, Masriera went on to publish or premiere nearly fifty plays, and founded and directed his own theatre company, as well as the magazine "Estilo". Lluís Masriera is currently represented in the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as in various private collections.