Waching daily Jan 11 2018

Sand with a ridge of mountains. Morocco

This small watercolour from the Prado that has never been seen in public

and which we've rescued here as it exemplifies what Africa meant to Fortuny particularly well.

Firstly the interest in the bareness of the spaces and the paring-down.

Secondly, the preference for geometry, for the cubic form of the buildings

and also the way the composition is ordered through strips.

Thirdly, the taste for brighter colours and more brilliant light.

He captures all this in Africa and it also fascinated all the European artists who went to Africa.

It had fascinated Delacroix, for example, Fromentin and the French artists.

Of course it extends to Matisse, Iturrino and Klein in the 20th century.

But here we also have a detail, which is the coloured shadows,

something Fortuny would go on to use.

We start to see to a lesser degree in Africa what he would later do in Granada and Portici,

it's something that is characteristic of the most advanced painting when representing the natural world.

Notice also the viewpoint he uses, it's so low that it allows him

to include that very narrow strip of sea.

He's not bothered about a panoramic sea view, nor by the fact that you can't see the sea,

he's interested in showing it but in this way, through that sort of very subtle strip.