From Old Drawing to the Nineteenth Century
The visit to the rooms of works on paper begins with a very heterogeneous selection that illustrates a wide range of styles, artistic figures and a lengthy chronology. Outstanding among the artists represented is Marià Fortuny, a very prolific draughtsman of whose work the Cabinet of Drawings and Prints conserves an extraordinary collection, numbering close on 2,000. The watercolour African Beach is a paradigmatic example of the talent and the incomparable skills that characterize the most international figure in the Catalan art of the second half of the 19th century. In the room there is one of the most singular pieces in the collection, the modellino for the painting The Will of Isabella the Catholic by Eduardo Rosales, considered among the most emblematic works of 19th-century Spanish history painting and which is kept in the Museo del Prado. Among the other artists from this period, we can mention the names of two great Catalan landscape artists: Lluís Rigalt and Ramon Martí i Alsina, artists well represented in the MNAC's collections, by each of whom we can see an example of their activity as draughtsmen.
the Catholic
Carlos Gaspar Vidiella
