Joaquim de Miró i Argenter (1849-1914) Venice.

Joaquim de Miró i Argenter (1849-1914) Venice, the Doge's Palace and the entrance to the Grand Canal.

Canvas measuring 65 cm by 50 cm.
Antique frame measuring 83.5 by 68 cm.

The artist offers us a superb view of the heart of the Serenissima. He set up his easel at the mouth of the Rio del Palazzo, which separates the Doge's Palace and the prison (Palazzo delle prigioni Nove), with the famous Bridge of Sighs connecting the two buildings. This bridge cannot be seen in this work because the artist is looking west/southwest, therefore towards the entrance to the Grand Canal, with the domes of the Basilica Santa Maria della Salute standing out to the left of the composition. On the right, we find the Doge's Palace and then the two columns (Colonna di San Marco and then the Colonna di San Todaro) which mark the entrance to La Piazzeta San Marco. The artist made other versions with smaller variations of this painting (24 by 16; 33 by 24 and 55 by 38)

Joaquim de Miró i Argenter (1849-1914)

Born in Sitges on February 3, 1849, he was the son of the lawyer Josep de Miró i Llopis and Joaquim Argenter i Armengol, and the brother of the military man and politician Josep de Miró i Argenter. In 1877, he collaborated with Joan Soler i Casanovas on the decoration of the Casino Prado Suburense, a company of which he was one of the founding partners. In the 1880s, with Joan Roig i Soler and Arcadi Mas i Fondevila, he created the Luminist School of Sitges and became its main representative. Nothing to do with the American Luminist movement, an artistic movement derived from the Hudson River School, which appeared in 1848 and ended around 1880, which notably advocated the visual disappearance of the brushstroke so that the final result approached a photographic sensation... therefore the complete opposite of Joaquin de Miro with his impressionist touch and generous pictorial layers! The emergence of the group - which also included Antoni Almirall i Romagosa and Joan Batlle i Amell - took place in August 1892, during the First Exhibition of Fine Arts in Sitges. An artist with a prolific body of work, he excelled in painting seascapes, orchards and farms, themes for which he proved to be a very meticulous observer (it was not for nothing that he loved photography), capable of capturing everyday reality and interpreting it as he saw fit. In portraiture, however, he tended towards schematism. He traveled very little. Through his work, we can still guess at three long stays, in Venice and Paris, where he left us many paintings, and a trip to the Maghreb. These trips are rather situated towards the end of his life.