Old Masters

Provenance:
Private Collection, Spain.

The Catalonian artist Ramón Martí y Alsina was born in 1826 and began his studies at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona. He was mainly a painter of landscapes, and made a practice of sketching and painting en plein air. In 1848, he travelled to Paris where he visited the Louvre and absorbed the influences of Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Courbet and the Barbizon School.

Here, he turns his attention to a dozing spaniel, almost certainly sketched in oils from life. Below the main sketch of the sleeping dog, Martí y Alsina has painted additional studies of the spaniel’s legs in different positions.