The Council House, Grenada.
Artist: M. Fortuny
Printed by George Barrie
100+ years old art print ... in excellent condition ... reverse side is blank !
Size: Size of the image: 7 x 9 1/2, print size with blank margins: 10 x 14 inches.
Condition: Excellent condition. Printed on heavier paper.
"The Old Hotel de Ville in Grenada" is painted on a panel, and was completed in 1873. Fortuny writes from Rome, in December, 1872, to his kind friend Stewart, "I am finishing the picture for Mr. Gibson, and I have not begun anything new, for I wish to be done with the things I have brought from Spain, in order to return afterwards to my native country again." This refers to Spanish subjects, sketched on the spot, for completion in Rome, of which this picture was one, and which must be all turned off the easel in the Roman studio before the artist would feel free to go on another Spanish foray. Again Fortuny writes from Rome to his "dear Guglieimo," June, 1873, "A thousand thanks for the advice you give me about my money. As for the forty thousand francs for Mr. Gibson's picture, if you cannot take care of it you can dispose of it to be drawn on sight in any banking house you please." Fortuny's biographer, the Baron Davilliers, remarks here, " The picture in question in this letter, and which belongs to Mr. Gibson, represents the Ayuntamiento Viejo, or ancient City Hall of Grenada, a very picturesque old edifice, with balconies covered with flowers and overrun by luxuriant foliage; it is a marvel of color." It is in compositions like this, where Fortuny represents an open-air scene, and, according to his own expression, "fences with the sunshine without parrying a single ray," that his marvelous talent particularly asserts itself. We marvel at the miracle, at the expressive eloquence with which he can make paint talk daylight.
This was never done by any preceding school of art, and constitutes, in Fortuny's person, the contribution made to art-experiment by the nineteenth century. The picture shows the court-yard of the old Moorish building, degraded to its present usage as a fish-mart. The crumbling tiled roofs print themselves against the sky, and eat into the plastered walls with their toothed shadow's. The balconies are so many flower-gardens, and when has flower-painting, done on this miniature scale, given so truly the mingling jewelry of tropical blossoms, the stiff bristling of thorny plants, the velvet dryness of sunny leaves? All over the picture a sense of torrid heat sucks up every suggestion of moisture. The sky is a deep basin of devouring blue fire, into which the red chimney-tops and the serrated ridges of the roofs are imbedded in the sharpest, distinctest mosaic. The raw, unmitigated delivery of color which belongs to vaporless noonday is fearlessly copied, and turned to a novel, spicy harmony; there are placards posted on the wall, of liveliest vermilion, chrome and blue. In the middle distance a knot of gaily-dressed children play and scramble, and their little features, sharpened by the sun, are got in place with the distinctness and reality of a photograph. A group set against the wall to the right, under the protection of a great umbrella, has the real daylight air of living people in the arid light of Spain, and tells besides a pretty tale of maternal happiness.
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