FRANCESC CASANOVAS GORCHS (Barcelona, 1853-1921).
"Orientalist Scene, Milan, 1889.
Oil on panel.
Signed, positioned and dated in the lower right corner.
Frame with some slight lack in the gilding.
Size: 33 x 25 cm; 45 x 37,5 cm (frame).
Painter, draughtsman, singer, art critic, comedian, stage director and theatrical impresario, Francesc Casanovas trained at the Escola Oficial de Llotja, where, in 1871-1872, he received two prizes. In 1877, the year of his first known drawings, he exhibited for the first time (Asociación del Fomento de las Artes, Girona) and published some lithographs in the magazine Lo Nunci. In 1882 he premiered his comedy Infanticidi at the Romea Theatre in Barcelona. In 1886 he took part in the Extraordinary Exhibition at the Sala Parés in Barcelona. Between 1886 and 1889 he toured Italy as a bass singer in Italian opera companies. His notebook of notes from this long campaign (Barcelona, Biblioteca de Catalunya) is a very vivid document of the average operatic world of the time. In 1891, back in Barcelona, he exhibited at the First General Exhibition of Fine Arts. He premiered and published new comedies, with illustrations by himself. He worked as an illustrator for the magazine La Llanterna de Manresa (1898-1899) and collaborated in important publishing projects such as Palma de Mallorca Cathedral (1898) and Arquitectura moderna de Barcelona (1900). As a painter he took part in the exhibition of self-portraits at the Círculo Artístico de Barcelona (1907), and in 1908, 1909, 1911, 1913 and 1917 he had solo exhibitions at the Sala Parés, as well as taking part in several of the main group exhibitions in Barcelona at the time. In the last stage of his life, Casanovas worked in the Renart decorative arts workshop. A friend of Apelles Mestres, he shared with him an eighteenth-century style and a Francophile and republican ideology.