The painter Francesc Torrescassana
Ca. 1858. Oil on canvas.Room 062A
This painting depicts the bust and three-quarters of a figure who stares at the viewer. His hair is tousled, and he wears a dark jacket with a closed collar, revealing the collar of a white shirt. He is the painter Francesc Torrescassana i Sallarès, who was born in Barcelona in 1845 and died in the same city in 1918. Torrescassana was a disciple of Martí i Alsina. He adopted Martí i Alsina´s realist style, which he applied to mainly rural landscapes, where he was an outstanding representative. The two artists met at the Llotja school, where Martí Alsina had been a teacher since 1852 and Torrescassana a pupil during the 1860-61 and 1863-64 school years. Torrescassana spent time in Rome and Paris and became one of the best-known landscape painters in Catalonia. However, he was not particularly competitive in his career, but rather approached his activity as a regular exhibitor in the successive group exhibitions of his time.
This portrait, extraordinarily well executed, has no signature or date. The painter must have painted it in the mid-1960s, as Torrescassana appears to be in his early twenties. Since it is a portrait of a young friend and disciple, it is a work devoid of conditionings and compromises, belonging to Martí i Alsina´s best period. The latter portrayed the painter on at least one other occasion in an oil painting in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid, which has a superficially Romantic character.
