JOAQUIN VAYREDA VILA (Girona, 1843 - Olot, Girona, 1894). "The river".1878. Oil on canvas.

JOAQUIN VAYREDA VILA (Girona, 1843 - Olot, Girona, 1894). "The river".1878. Oil on canvas. Signed and dated in the lower right corner. Size: 50 x 90 cm; 68 x 109 cm (frame). In this canvas Vayreda captures, with his personal expressive and atmospheric language, an impressionist landscape, of loose invoice and special luminous sensibility, typical of his stage of maturity. It is a markedly horizontal view, at the same time that it is organized in planes of depth that, however, do not stagger towards the bottom, but escape to one side following the course of the lagoon. On the lake surface the reflections are resolved with sublime skill, extracting subtle cadences whose harmonic timbres infect the viewer with their lyricism. The border of the wheat field traces a horizontal line that accentuates the perspective in the background. By means of this studied composition Vayreda reinforces the three-dimensional impression of the space, and at the same time breaks with the excessive monotony of what would be mere superimpositions of planes. The greens and tans are a sign of the autumn season, and the dense mass of vegetation stands out, opaque, against the clear sky except for light clouds. The composition becomes spontaneous thanks to the zig-zag that invites us to look around, letting the landscape breathe, and is nuanced in a great tonal variety. Founder of the landscape school of Olot, at the age of nine he began his studies under the guidance of Narcís Pascual, then director of the Olot School of Drawing. He moved to Barcelona around 1860 to study philosophy, and there he continued his artistic training in the workshop of Ramón Martí Alsina. In 1865 he exhibited for the first time in the premises of the Society of Artists of Barcelona, and the following year he participated in an exhibition in the Sala Parés. In 1869 he founds in Olot the Artistic-Cultural Center, which will become a focus of renovation and experimentation against the official academicism. In 1871 he travels for the first time to Paris, and comes into contact with the Barbizon school, as well as with the first impressionists. The outbreak of the Carlist War led him to go into exile in France in 1872, where he remained for three years. On his return he resumed the activities of the Artistic Center, and Olot became a center of attraction for Catalan painters, attracted by the paintings that Vayreda exhibited in the Parés room. Works by Joaquín Vayreda are kept in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the MACBA in Barcelona, the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Víctor Balaguer Museum in Barcelona, the Art Museum of Girona and the Abbey of Montserrat.