Monday, December 6, 2021

Molti Ritratti - Júlia Peraire

Subjects of my Molti Ritratti posts are famous, or at least well-known, people.  But today's post is different.   Featured is Júlia Peraire i Ricarte (1888-1941), model, mistress and wife of Ramon Casas (1866-1932), an important Barcelona-based artist.  Her Catalunian Wikipedia entry is here, and translation is available.

Casas' Wikipedia entry mentions that he came from a wealthy family.  But she did not, and his family did not approve of him marrying her, which he did not do until 1922.  Their relationship began in 1906 when he saw her selling flowers and lottery tickets outside a Plaça de Catalunya cafe.

She served as model for a number of advertising images, many drawings, and paintings.  Examples are presented below.

Gallery

Flora - 1906
As mentioned, she had been a flower seller.

Julia en grana - 1906

Sargantain - 1907
For some reason, this is said to be Casas' best-known painting of her.

Júlia - drawing c.1907

Jocs Florals poster - 1908
An example of her in Casas' commercial work.

Júlia en blau - 1908

Júlia - c.1908
Undated, but probably painted about the same time as the previous painting.

Júlia - c.1908
Ditto.

Cordobesa - 1913
She was born in Barcelona, but here Casas depicts her in Cordova costume.

Julia in Red and Green - 1915

Júlia - 1925
She was about 37 years old when this was painted: still an attractive woman.

2 comments:

Hal said...

An unexpected and interesting subject. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm not at all surprised she was still attractive at 37; most beautiful women retain their looks well past that age (in my opinion, of course).

Anonymous said...

I do not like these paintings because of the way Julia is depicted.