146 Portraits by a Virtuoso Watercolorist in Tangiers PORTFOLIO Josep Tapiró Certain artists are well known by their contemporaries but become relegated to obscurity by the fickleness of time. Fortuitously rediscovered, Catalan Orientalist painter Josep Tapiró (Reus, 1836–Tangiers, 1913) is an eloquent example of such a painter. Long forgotten, he had a strong international following while he was alive. He was educated in Barcelona at the Escola de Liotja and lived in Rome for several years. He showed regularly in London, where he had many clients, and he won many prestigious prizes over the course of his long career, including a medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889 and another—the only one awarded—at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Despite this, Tapiró’s name was all but forgotten, even in his country of origin, before being revived again this spring thanks to an exhibition dedicated to his career now being shown at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona, which is promoting the Catalan artists whose works are held in its collection. On view until September 14, 2014, the show was organized by art historian Jordi À. Carbonell on the occasion of the centenary of the artist’s death. As his work is exposed to today’s public, Tapiró reemerges as an artist of significance, characterized by an unusual mastery of watercolor, one of painting’s most complex techniques, By Elena Martínez-Jacquet which he used in his meticulous examination of traditional North African society, specifically that of Tangiers, a town he first visited in 1871 with his friends Bernardo Ferrandiz and Maria Fortuny (the latter a painter as well). He became the first Iberian painter to settle there and lived there from 1877 until his death. He developed distinguished friends in both the Muslim and Jewish communities there and was able to witness ceremonies that no other Westerner had seen before. This, combined with his interest in Auguste Comte’s positivist theories and the physical and emotional proximity that he was able to achieve with his subjects, uniquely informed his Tangiers paintings, which are mostly portraits, lending them an aura of realism. Tapiró was not typical of the Orientalist movement. He eschewed exoticism and the fantasy visions of the Maghreb perpetuated by the many travel accounts and literary works of the time, focusing instead on an almost scientific way of observing what surrounded him. Loaded with delicious details, his portraits of beautifully adorned newlyweds, of street musicians, shamans, beggar philosophers, and even servants offer a perspective on the society that is as picturesque as it is authentic. Discovering these works is an invitation to immerse oneself in a world that lies at the intersection between art and anthropology and to retrace the steps of a virtuoso watercolorist who saw the world through curious eyes and was eager to better understand the habitués of his adopted city. The result is an aesthetic experience that nourishes our thirst to better comprehend the world. Josep Tapiró, Pintor de Tànger Through September 14, 2014 Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona www.museunacional.cat Josep Tapiró: Pintor de Tànger. Edited by Jordi À. Carbonell. Published in Catalan and Spanish, with translations into English and French by Ed. Museu Nacional de Catalunya/Universitat Rovira i Virgili, 2014. 224 pp. ISBN: 978-84-8043-218-4. Softcover, 33 euros. FIG. 1 (left): Josep Tapiró with painter Josep Llovera and a friend in his studio in Tangiers in 1892. Photographer unknown. Private collection. FIG. 2 (right): Tangiers Beauty. C. 1891. Watercolor on paper. Dahesh Museum of Art, New York.
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