Près de la cathédrale, Grenade

Overview

A small oil on wooden panel, 40,7 × 32,7 cm, dated 1881, in the V. I. Surikov Krasnoyarsk Art Museum under the Russian title «У собора в Испании. Гренада» ("By the cathedral in Spain. Granada"). The museum showed it in its exhibition От иконописи до модерна ("From icon-painting to modernism"), and the culture.ru Artefact record links it to the Russian State Museum Catalogue (goskatalog id 1248709).

Making of the work

Marie was in Granada at the end of October 1881, on the Spanish journey that took her through Madrid, Toledo, Seville and Cordoba. She arrived on the evening of 26 October, and by the next morning she had "déjà vue l'inévitable cathédrale" (093.0295). She found the city overwhelming for a painter: "On ne sait de quel côté courir tellement il y a des choses à faire. Des rues, des silhouettes, des vues !" (093.0295). In August, before the journey, she had noted "il y a tableau a Grenade" in its gypsy groups (092.0435). The panel's small size and its title, set by the cathedral, fit the quick studies she made in her few days there.

A possible catalogue match. The 1885 memorial catalogue lists a Mendiant de Grenade (no. 62) at 0,40 × 0,32 m, the size of this panel to within a centimetre. Nothing else in the catalogue is called Granada. The match is likely, but it is not documented.

History

How it reached Krasnoyarsk is not stated in the records consulted. The Surikov Museum's other Bashkirtseff, the Portrait de Madame Po, came from the Russian Museum through the Krasnoyarsk regional museum in 1928, after Marie's mother had given her collection to the Russian Museum. The same route is plausible for this panel but is not recorded.

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