Identificador: TDX:4399
Autors: Roig Pallarés, Aleix
Resum:
Antoni Casanova Estorach (1847, Tortosa - 1896, Paris) was one of the most prominent Catalan
painters of the 19th century. Born in Tortosa, he lived the first years of his childhood in this
municipality, later moving with his family to Barcelona. His precocious artistic talen! sparked the
interest of the teachers al school, and he received his first free drawing classes in the workshop
of Josep Planella (1804, Barcelona - 1890, Barcelona). Shortly after, he would combine these
lessons with !hose taught al La Llotja. Subsequently, he would expand his studies al the Real
Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. After a brief return to Barcelona, creator
obtained a pension that allowed him to settle in Rome. In the Eternal City, the artist entered the
international commercial circuit that yearned to obtain small genre works, these creations being
heirs of the tableautins popularized by Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (1815, Lyon - 1891, Paris),
following also the path of the Reus painter Mariano Fortuny y Marsal (1838, Reus - 1874, Rome).
Already in Paris, the artist specialized mainly in satirical anticlerical painting, in which a wide
variety of clerics are shown in comic altitudes. In the City of Light, the painter became a
paradigm of success, combining the creation of large canvases destined to be presented al
competitions with genre productions that were among the best paid of their time. Finally, the
painter died in 1896 after suffering various personal misfortunes.
Repositori URV