SANTIAGO RUSIÑOL | EL MONTSENY

Sala Parés, Barcelona

Fernando Pintane (purchased from the above in 1929)

Private collection

Sale: Durán, Madrid, 21 December 2004, lot 180

Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

M. Alcántara Gusat, in Las Noticias, 6 November 1929, p. 2

Josep de C. Laplana, Santiago Rusiñol, el pintor, l'home, Montserrat, 1995, p. 461, no. 20.3.3, catalogued & illustrated

Galería Antiquaria, XVII, January 1999, p. 77, illustrated

Josep de C. Laplana & Mercedes Palau-Ribes, La pintura de Santiago Rusiñol. Catàleg sistemàtic, Barcelona, 2004, no. 20.3.3, catalogued & illustrated, and L'obra i la critica, p. 227, fig. 194, illustrated

Barcelona, Sala Parés, 1929 (as El Montseny), no. 7 or 15

Valencia, Iturrino-Rusiñol. Jardines de España, 1993, illustrated in the catalogue (as Parque Badés d'Arbúcies, circa 1895-1899)

Painted in 1929, this is a view of the mountainous region of Montseny, about one hundred kilometres north of Barcelona, whose peaks, forests and streams inspired the artist for at least one other painting compositionally very similar but with a stream occupying the foreground (see Laplana & Palau-Ribes no. 20.3.5).

Rusiñol's burgeoning success as a painter enabled him to concentrate almost completely on the subject closest to his heart, Spain's gardens and landscapes. From 1900 he travelled widely across the regions of Spain, painting in Girona, Horta, Catalonia, Valencia, Ibiza, Mallorca, Játiva, La Granja and Aranjuez. Wherever he went, Rusiñol recorded the sometimes domestic, at other times enigmatic, forms and rich vegetation of the shrubbery, orchards, flowerbeds and arboretums that he discovered.