Ramón Casas, Barcelona 1866-1932

Larragoiti Collection, Paris
Sala Parés, Barcelona
Purchased from the above by the present owner in 1981

Josép Ma. Jordá, Ramón Casas Pintor, Barcelona 1931, p. 59, illustrated
Isabel Coll, Ramón Casas, Barcelona, 2002, p. 230, no. 223, catalogued & illustrated

Painted in Paris in 1893, the present work is one of a select group of important studies of the nude that Casas executed during 1893-94, compositions that departed significantly from the accepted academic practices of the day. In Desnudo femenino, Casas’ sensibility towards his model is finely expressed through his use of white, grey and flesh tones. Painted with great spontaneity, the brushwork elegantly captures both the sinuous outline of the model's limbs and the intensity of her gaze. The restraint of Casas' palette and the merging of colour, provide a perfect background for the striking beauty of the young girl, while the close cropping of the picture surface gives a sensual "close-up" of the form. Both the cool colouring and cropped edges suggest affinities with Whistler and Degas. The stark minimalism of the composition with the model isolated in the centre, complete the consumately Modernist atmosphere of this painting.

One of the founding members of the Quatre Gats circle of artists in Barcelona and the leading representative of the Modernista movement, Ramón Casas abandoned his studies when he was 11 years in order to pursue his vocation as a painter. In 1882, aged just 16 years and with the financial support of his father, he travelled to Paris with Santiago Rusiñol. There he studied under Carolus Duran and at the Gervex Academy, where Carrière and Puvis de Chavannes corrected students' work. That same year he returned to Spain where to great acclaim he held his inaugural exhibition with Rusiñol in the Sala Parés in Barcelona.