José Tomás Salvany
1886. Oil on canvas.On display elsewhere
José Tomàs y Salvany (Valls, Tarragona, 1839–Madrid, 1905) was a politician, writer and industrialist born in Valls, Tarragona, in the mid-19th century. Politically, he was an advocate of federal republicanism. He became a member of parliament for Barcelona in 1869, and at the same time, he was a member of the revolutionary junta that led the federalist insurrection of the same year. Between 1873 and 1876, he represented his hometown as deputy in Congress. The artist was also president of the Barcelona provincial committee of the Federal Party at the beginning of the Bourbon Restoration, and in addition, a member of Emilio Castelar´s pro-possibilist party, for which he was elected senator for Tarragona between 1893 and 1898. As a writer, he was noted for his socio-economic analysis in works such as El cambio internacional, sus causas y sus efectos [Changes at an international level, their causes and efects] and España a fines del siglo XIX [Spain at the end of the 19th century]. The figure depicted was erroneously identified in Museo del Prado Gazette of 1983 as Pedro Salaverría.
Díez, José Luis, Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz (1815-1894), Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 1994, p.458-459 nº377
