Work and Importance

Fausto Morell was known for his exquisite imitations of the 15th-century Flemish style. His most important works are paintings of historical events, religious scenes and portraits. Morell was a descendant of a very prominent Mallorcan noble: Prince Orlandis, the founder of Casal Solleric (18th century), which is now Palma’s municipal cultural centre in the Passeig d’es Born.

Family Background

He grew up in a very art-minded family: by the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, Casal Solleric had already become a private cultural venue for symposiums and artistic events. Among the visitors were writers, musicians and painters, as well as Austrian Empress Elisabeth (known to posterity as “Sisi”), who came in the company of her relation Archduke Ludwig Salvator, and of course incognito, to see Fausto Morell’s studio. In addition to the archduke, who sat for a portrait, Morell’s circle of friends included the musician Pau Casals, the poet Miguel Costa y Llobera and Ricard Anckermann. Fausto Morell interceded on several occasions when differences arose between the proprietor of Son Vida at the time, Fernando Truyols, and the artist Ricard Anckermann regarding the dining room decor. One of Morell’s idiosyncrasies was to invite friends like Pau Casals or Archduke Ludwig Salvator to his studio and, while painting, to engage in heated conversations often revolving round the subject of the work in progress.

The Other Fausto Morell

There’s another important painter named Fausto Morell: viz. Fausto Morell y Orlandis, the father of the aforementioned artist. Heirs of a rich aristocratic family, both enjoyed the privilege of not having to cater to patrons and their tastes, which left them at liberty to develop their style and subject-matter freely.

Family history

Anckermann was born in 1842 in Palma de Mallorca. As his surname suggests, he was of German descent: at the end of the 18th century his grandfather, Karl Angermann, was recruited by a Swiss regiment to serve as armourer. The regiment hired their services out to the Spanish crown and were transferred to Palma. The alteration of the name Angermann was due to civil servants’ errors in writing the unfamiliar name and the prevailing tendency to bring spellings into line with Spanish pronunciation. Ricard Anckermann’s father, Jordi Angermann/Ankermann (there are over a dozen variants of the family name), in turn served as armourer in a battalion of the Mallorcan militia.

Life

Ricard Anckermann’s talent was conspicuous even from a young age. After his first years of study and a very brief career as municipal councillor of Palma, he fled from politics to Paris, to give himself entirely over to his art. When he ran out of money, his brother, an engineer supervising the building of a steamship in England, found him a job as interior decorator, and with the same ship that was later to ply between the island and mainland under the name of “Lulio”, Anckermann returned to embark on a brilliant career as an artist and art teacher.

Polymath

Ricard Anckermann had an astoundingly wide range of interests. He felt at home and achieved consummate mastery in vastly different styles, subjects, formats and materials. He took a serious interest in other pursuits as well. He loved music not only as an inactive listener, but played the cello and even composed works of his own, one of which he sent to his brother Carles, director of the Tacón theatre orchestra in Havana, Cuba. His other passions were literature and historical research; in the latter field he published two treatises.

Decoration of the Son Vida dining room

At the turn of the century Ferran Truyols, the Marqués de la Torre and owner of Son Vida, commissioned Ricard Anckermann to decorate the dining room. The artist spent four years working on it, his last major project. The work consists of canvases that are mounted on frames and cover the walls of the room. They depict ten scenes from a royal hunting expedition in the 18th century.

The scenes show: The Departure from the Castle, Riding to the Hunting Grounds, The Pursuit of Game, A Bolting Horse, the Prince and His Bride, Open-Air Cooking, Banquet, Dancing, Games and the Return to the Castle.

In contrast to his previous works, the painter here entirely dispenses with heavy symbolism and concentrates all his efforts on a naturalistic portrayal without ulterior motives.

Work and Importance

Antoni Ribas exemplifies the artist who, despite tremendous talent, never took the leap into the international art market because he preferred the security of steady employment at home to the prospect of a precarious existence as an artist abroad. And that in spite of the sensation he’d caused by winning the gold medal at the exhibition of the Academia de Bellas Artes in Barcelona in 1866: against the phalanx of established Catalan artists who had embraced the prevailing trend of historical Romanticism, the unknown 21-year-old Mallorcan pitted a naturalistic landscape, which took first prize. With this achievement, Ribas reinforced and consolidated the revolution that had already begun in Spanish painting towards realistic depictions of landscapes.

Life

After his success in Barcelona, he took up work in 1868 as a set designer at the Teatro Príncipe de Asturias in Palma and in 1872 as an art instructor at the Academia de Bellas Artes, also in Palma. As an artist he had already received honorary titles from an early age. Towards the end of his career, however, Ribas, the one-time pioneer, came to be seen as a figurehead of established academic painting, against which the turn-of-the-century modernists revolted. Ribas was friends with O’Neille, Ricard Anckermann and Fausto Morell, with whom he started up an artist’s association (Fomento de la Pintura y Escultura) in 1876.

Life, Work, Importance

Juan Pantoja de la Cruz ranks among the leading Spanish portraitists of the late 16th century and is an exponent of Spanish Renaissance painting. In 1598 upon Philip III’s accession to the throne, he was appointed court painter.