Plein air

Plein air is an oil painting by Ramón Casas dated 1890, one of the works in which the Catalan painter consolidated his personal way of handling light and figures. The scene shows a table with a seated woman, a bottle and, in the background, a windmill that points to the urban landscape around Paris, where Casas was working that year. Its most striking feature is the spatial composition: three depth planes are linked by a broken line running from the empty chair in the foreground, to the woman seated by the small table, to the man in the distance. The open, almost casual framing recalls photography and Degas, while the relationship between the two figures is left unexplained, giving the scene a withdrawn and mysterious air. Colour is reduced almost to a range of greys that wraps the figures in a soft haze. Although the subject relates to some Impressionist motifs of drinkers and cafés, the handling is closer to French Naturalism. It was one of Casas's first significant successes in Barcelona and belongs to the body of work with which Catalan painting was renewed at the end of the nineteenth century.

Painter

Ramon Casas

Date

1890

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

505 × 655 cm

Museum

Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona

Movement

Catalan modernism, Art Nouveau

Depicts

table, windmill, woman, bottle

Share:FacebookWhatsApp