ELISEO MEIFRÈN ROIG (Barcelona, 1857 - 1940). "Casa de Montesquiu. Oil on panel. Provenance: collection of Meifrén's widow. Work published in "Eliseo Meifrén. Ensayo Biográfico y Crítico", Bernardino de Pantorba. Editorial Delta, 1942. Size: 54 x 65 cm; 84 x 93 cm (frame). In this painting, a Catalan farmhouse, partially camouflaged by the vegetation, occupies a large part of the frame. With great technical skill, Meifrèn uses here an impressionist language, although through his genius he derives a particular expression. An impressionist brushstroke, but reread through his genius. A timeless patina coexists with instantaneous capture. Thus, forms are blurred and become pure expressive stain; light, worked and thought out, acquires a renewed protagonism, and nature takes on a new atmospheric dimension, which goes beyond the simple reproduction of reality. Through his favourite genre, landscape, the painter was able to capture the eternal character of nature in the face of an age of constant political and social change. In this work the master reflects the maturity of his style, with a landscape of purely chromatic and luminous treatment, which leaves aside the meticulous description of the real model, a purely plastic image, in which the loose, impastoed and precise brushstroke configures forms and spaces based on the juxtaposition of colours. A disciple of Antonio Caba at the La Lonja School in Barcelona, after completing his studies he spent some time in Paris, where he coincided with the public beginning of Impressionism and became acquainted with painting "à plen air". He returned to Barcelona in 1879 and that same year won the gold medal at the Regional Exhibition in Valencia. The following year he made his individual debut at the Sala Parés in Barcelona, where he continued to exhibit regularly from then on. He was a member of the Modernist group and frequented Els Quatre Gats. Although he was also a portraitist, Meifrèn was eminently a landscape and marine painter. He was one of the discoverers of the pictorial possibilities of Cadaqués, and he also used to paint Mallorcan landscapes (he was director of the School of Fine Arts in Palma). He made several trips in search of new landscapes, especially to France, but also to the Canary Islands, Belgium, Italy and the United States. He held exhibitions in Barcelona, Madrid (1881), Chicago (1893), Paris (1899), Brussels (1910), Santiago de Chile (1910), Buenos Aires (1910), Amsterdam (1912) and San Francisco (1915), among many other cities around the world. His style began with the detailed realism that dominated the Catalan school at the end of the 19th century and gradually evolved towards Impressionism, a language that would not be fully evident in his work until his last years. Throughout his career he won numerous prizes, including the first medals at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Madrid (1906) and Barcelona (1896), the Nonell prize in Barcelona (1935), the bronze medal at the Universal Exhibition in Paris (1888) and the grand prizes at the International Exhibitions of Buenos Aires (1910) and San Diego (1916). In 1952, Barcelona City Council dedicated a retrospective exhibition to him, held at the Palacio de la Virreina. He is represented in the Museo del Prado, the Museo Nacional de Arte de Cataluña, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Barcelona and the Thyssen-Bornemisza, among many others.