The sculptor Samsó
Ca. 1895. Oil on canvas.Not on display
This very simple bust portrait depicts the sitter in an almost frontal position and his gaze is fixed on the viewer.
Joan Samsó i Lengly was an outstanding member of the generation that led the strong renaissance of Catalan sculpture in the second half of the 19th century. Joan Samsó i Lengly was born in 1834 in the town of Gràcia, when it was still an independent municipality of Barcelona, and he died in 1908 in Madrid. It was in Madrid that he carried out most of his artistic activity which, although centred on religious imagery, revealed the painter´s clear desire to distance himself from the traditional concept, already poorly regarded by academically trained sculptors for its bland and stereotyped nature.
Samsó and Caba were practically of the same generation, Samsó being four years older, and their friendship must have been forged in their youth, when they both took classes together at the Llotja in Barcelona, between the academic years 1854-55 and 1857-58. Caba would become a teacher at the school in 1869 and its headteacher between 1887 and 1901. In addition to his perfect commissioned portraits, which were never overly realistic, Caba usually portrayed his friends in medium-sized oil paintings which he dedicated to them with the inscription "to my friend" or "to his friend", as in this case.
The Sculptor Samsó is a portrait that bears a strong mark of the artist. He was without doubt the great specialist of this genre in the Catalonia at the time. Caba, a Romantic artist, soon took advantage of the teachings on the purest realism. This was a style which he developed throughout practically his entire career. He mainly used it for portraiture, to the extent that even in his most formal commissions the results are usually paintings of great naturalness and even psychological strength and perception.
Paintings by Caba dated after 1896 are not at all common. Therefore, Samsó´s oil painting, whose subject appears to be in his sixties, can be dated to around the mid-1990s.
Díez, J.L (dir), Artistas pintados. Retratos de pintores y escultores del siglo XIX en el Museo del Prado, Madrid, Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, Dirección General de Bellas Artes y Bienes Culturales, 1997, p.162
