Study for “The Corso” (1897)

Signed and titled upper left: “Studio per ‘Il Corso’ G. Bacarisas”
Exhibitions: Rome, 1904; Rome, 1906.
Bibliography: Esposizione di Gustavo Bacarisas Roma MCMIV, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Passeggiata di Ripetta, 1904, no. 41 (with the title Il Corso verso sera – bozzetto); Exhibition of impressions, paintings and drawings by Gustavo Bacarisas, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Studi Corrodi, 1906), no. 51 (with the title Il Corso a sera – Roma).
Notes: this is the study for the painting The Corso, exhibited in London, Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts, 1897, no. 417, and Barcelona, IV Exposición Belas Artes – Industrias Artisticas, 1898, p. 34, no. 505 (illustrated).

Native of Gibraltar and a leading figure in Spanish painting between the 19th and 20th centuries, Gustavo Bacarisas stands out for his refined synthesis of the legacy of Mariano Fortuny, the chromatic and luministic aspects of French Impressionism, and the elegance of Whistler and Sargent. A crucial turning point in his artistic career was his prolonged stay in Rome between 1892 and 1908. Immediately welcomed into the colony of Spanish painters and fully integrated into the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the capital, animated by artists of different origins, merchants and collectors, Bacarisas projected himself towards the modernity of the 20th century, assimilating and reworking Fortuny’s legacy in a personal key, from narrative exoticism to luminism, to the preciousness of the brushstroke, in a language of authentic international appeal. The ultimate emblem of this modernity is the painting presented here, Study for “Il Corso”, exhibited in Rome in 1904 and 1906 and executed precisely as a study for the work of the same name presented by Bacarisas at the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy in London in 1897 and at the IV Exposición Belas Artes – Industrias Artisticas in Barcelona in 1898.

In the painting El Corso, as in a photographic snapshot, a portion of the famous Roman street is framed in the evening, illuminated by the artificial light of street lamps and shop windows still open. While the finished painting is crowded with people, from the young newspaper boy to horse-drawn carriages and women and men strolling along, in the study presented here, the focus is entirely on the lively couple in the foreground, bathed in the reddish glow of electric lights. Just a few years earlier, in 1892, the first high-voltage cable had brought electricity from Tivoli to Rome, transforming the night-time face of the historic centre. The canvas therefore represents a true hymn to modernity, to the excitement of the crowd and movement: the couple, dressed in elegant clothes, seem to be walking towards the viewer, almost “stepping out” of the canvas, and at the same time, they are attracted by something happening to their right, off-screen. With quick brushstrokes, compositional wit and speed of impression, Bacarisas perfectly embodies the character of what Baudelaire defined as “the painter of modern life”, the singer of “the eternal beauty and wonderful harmony of life in the capitals […] in the tumult of human freedom […]”, especially at dusk, when “the cities begin to light up. The gaslight clashes with the purple of the sunset. Honest or dishonest, reasonable or mad, men say to themselves: ‘At last the day is over!’”[1] . The painting, and even more so the preparatory study, seem to provide a complete visual translation of Baudelaire’s words, restoring the ephemeral beauty of urban life, the dizzying and kaleidoscopic nature of modernity, as well as the play of light and reflections, interpreted by the painter with fresh execution and refined chromatic sensitivity, as also attested by other contemporary works on similar subjects created in Rome. Behind the elegant bourgeois couple walking among the shop windows and the bustling city, the discreet figure of a commoner with a newborn baby in her arms emerges: Bacarisas thus combines, with naturalness and without concessions to the pietism then widespread in social painting, two complementary dimensions of city life.

A refined chronicler of high society and, at the same time, a sensitive interpreter of popular life, over the years the artist was also able to capture the more folkloric and traditional side of the cities he frequented, from Rome to London, Buenos Aires to Seville. It is no coincidence that at the 1905 Biennale he presented The Margherita Bridge in Rome, a work in which, through twilight atmospheres lit by artificial lights, he entrusts the leading role to a working-class family on their way to Prati, then a neighbourhood still under construction. A more humble and rustic dimension that undoubtedly evokes the contemporary painting of Umberto Coromaldi, a poetic, luminous and intimate chronicle of the Roman countryside. The study for The Corso thus reveals multiple narrative suggestions: the ease of the couple in elegant clothes, the humility of the common woman, the changing expressions of the crowd and the mild climate of a Roman evening, elements that the Spanish magazine “La Ilustración Artística” did not fail to praise for having combined “without effort or embellishment the varied ensemble of types to produce contrasts of features and tones […] in representing the famous street of the Eternal City at night illuminated by large electric spotlights. The interest aroused by this canvas at the exhibition at the Royal Academy in London is justified, and the praise given to Bacarisas is well deserved”[2] .

[1] C. Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life, in Writings on Art, Turin, Einaudi, 2004, pp. 286–287.

[2] Nuestros Grabados, in “La Ilustración Artística”, XVII, 839, 1898, p. 66.

Elena Lago