WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART MONDAY 26 SEPTEMBER 2022

132 96 Mariano Fortuny y Marsal (Spanish, 1838-1874) PORTRAIT OF AWOMAN watercolour; (oval) signed on reverse 11.50 by 9.75in. (29.2 by 24.8cm) Frame Dimensions: 14.25 by 11.75in. (36.2 by 29.8cm) Born in Reus near Tarragona as Marià Josep Maria Bernat Fortuny i Marsal (in Catalan) the artist is known more simply as Marià Fortuny or Mariano Fortuny and has been described by The Prado Museum (Madrid) as having, “… passed into posterity as one of 19th-century Spain’s greatest masters. The stature of his art is accompanied by the memory of an enormous international success equaled only by Sorolla in his time.” His short lived career included works across a wide range of subjects common to the period including Orientalism, historical genre painting and military painting of Spanish colonial expansion. Fortuny studied under scholarship in Barcelona and then Rome and in 1859, was called by the local Government of Barcelona to depict the campaigns of the Spanish-Moroccan War. The work he made there would later serve as preliminary sketches for his monumental work, The Battle of Tetuan (Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya). His time spent in Morocco inspired his interest in the exotic. He would later marry the sister of Orientalist artist, Ricardo de Madrazo - Cecilia de Madrazo - whose father became curator of the Prado. Their son, Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, would go on to become a celebrated fashion and tapestry designer. Mariano Fortuny died prematurely of malaria in Italy in 1874. Following his death his studio was catalogued and auctioned at the Hôtel Drouot. The Prado Museum boasts over one hundred examples of his work in their collection. €1,000-€1,500 (£860-£1,290 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot96