Salvador Martínez Cubells, Father of the Artist
1901. Oil on canvas.Room 062A
Enrique painted this portrait of his father Salvador Martínez Cubells upon his return from a trip to Germany in 1901. It depicts the artist, who is aged, slightly bent, almost half-length and in profile. He is focused on mixing the colours on his palette just before he prepares to use his brush on a painting, which is out of the viewer’s sight. The painter, who is concentrated on his own task and absorbed in the space in which he finds himself, has no connection with the viewer. This underlines the intimate, even domestic character of the portrait, in which the son pays a sincere homage to his father. He is caught in a common gesture of his profession.
A youthful work, the head stands out, with its warm tonality and finely nuanced colouring. The rest of the figure is very sketchy, executed with a rapid, nervous execution, except for the luminous, impastoed brushstroke in white that defines the rigid false collar which, like a diagonal of light, cuts the figure and the painting in two.
In context of the date of the work, not only does its vibrant execution of the work and its luminosity evoke the stablished Sorollism of the period, but the spontaneous veracity of the painting also evokes works within the tradition of Spanish painting, more distant in time, yet so present and influential in the pictorial art of these years.
There is another portrait with similar characteristics, signature, date and dimensions in a private collection in Madrid.
Artistas pintados: retratos de pintores y escultores del siglo XIX en el Museo del Prado, Madrid, Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, Dirección Gener, 1997, p.172 nº52
