JOSÉ MARÍA SERT (Barcelona, 1874 - 1945). Untitled,... Lot 25

JOSÉ MARÍA SERT (Barcelona, 1874 - 1945). Untitled, sketch for the Salon of the Bucraneans at Kent House, London, 1913. Oil on panel. The final canvas is published in "José María Sert. His life and work", Alberto del Castillo, plate 7. It has xylophages. Measurements: 42,5 x 51 cm. In 1913, Sert painted the decoration of two adjoining rooms (the ballroom and the music room) in the residence of Sir Saxton Noble, in Kent House, London. In the first of these rooms, also known as the Hall of the Bocranes, the artist depicted two large scenes, one of them dedicated to the Triumph of Bacchus. The other composition, located on the opposite wall, has notable compositional and conceptual coincidences with the present work, such that it is fully justified to consider it as a preliminary study for this decorative ensemble. Thus, while the one in the Kent palace shows a violinist at the top of a flight of stairs, ours, of a more sketchy nature, features undiscernible figures. In both pieces, however, there are present bearers, exotic animals and centaurs, while singing putti ascend to the throne. Alberto del Castillo states that "the fundamental iconographic idea of this composition is the participation of the elephants in the triumph, an oriental motif that entered Europe through Venice, like so many other orientalisms". Trained with Benito Mercadé and Pere Borrell, Sert was a member of the Círculo Artístico de Sant Lluc and later a disciple of A. de Riquer. In 1900 Torras i Bages commissioned him to paint a large mural decoration for Vic Cathedral, of which he presented sketches and preparatory canvases in 1905 and 1907 in Barcelona and Paris, of which this piece is an example. Through his exhibitions abroad, he soon acquired extraordinary prestige among the French and English aristocracy, for whom he produced sumptuous decorations. In 1908 he decorated the Sala de los Pasos Perdidos of the Palace of Justice in Barcelona, and in 1910 he presented the mural decoration of the ballroom of the Marquis of Alella (Barcelona) at the Salon d'Automne in Paris and decorated the music room of the Princess of Polignac in Paris. Two years later he exhibited an important group of works at the Salon in the French capital. In the following years he worked for Queen Victoria Eugenia (Santander) and for Robert Rotschild (Chantilly), and had solo exhibitions in London at the Agnew Gallery. In 1920 he married Maria Godebska, "Misia", a muse of the Parisian artistic scene, in Paris. He painted new murals for important houses in Park Lane (England), Buenos Aires, Palm Beach and Paris, and in 1926 he made, to great expectation, an exhibition of his works for the cathedral of Vic in the Jeu de Paume in Paris. In 1927, with the support of his friend and patron Francesc Cambó, he completed the main part of the cathedral's decoration, which was completed with the construction of the lunettes between 1928 and 1929. In 1930 he was made a member of the Academy of San Fernando, and in the following years he worked all over the world, painting important murals such as those in the Waldorf Astoria in New York, the chapel of the Palacio de Liria in Madrid and the Council Chamber of the League of Nations in Geneva. He was the most eminent decorative painter of his time, and his style was characterised by a great imagination at the service of a rhetorical language influenced by Goya's Orientalism and Expressionism.