Cau Ferrat Museum
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Cau Ferrat, located in
Sitges Sitges (, , ) is a town about 35 kilometres southwest of Barcelona, in Spain, renowned worldwide for its Film Festival, Carnival, and LGBT Culture. Located between the Garraf Massif and the Mediterranean Sea, it is known for its beaches, nightspot ...
(in
Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy. Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the north ...
in
Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...
), was the home and study of artist and writer
Santiago Rusiñol Santiago Rusiñol i Prats (, ; Barcelona 25 February 1861 – Aranjuez 13 June 1931) was a Spanish painter, poet, journalist, collector and playwright. He was one of the leaders of the Catalan ''modernisme'' movement. He created more than a ...
, one of the most important figures of the
Modernisme ''Modernisme'' (, Catalan for "modernism"), also known as Catalan modernism and Catalan art nouveau, is the historiographic denomination given to an art and literature movement associated with the search of a new entitlement of Catalan culture ...
movement in
Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy. Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the north ...
. It is one of the three museums in
Sitges Sitges (, , ) is a town about 35 kilometres southwest of Barcelona, in Spain, renowned worldwide for its Film Festival, Carnival, and LGBT Culture. Located between the Garraf Massif and the Mediterranean Sea, it is known for its beaches, nightspot ...
located on the shores of Sant Sebastià beach.


History

Born into a bourgeois Catalan industrial family from Manlleu,
Santiago Rusiñol Santiago Rusiñol i Prats (, ; Barcelona 25 February 1861 – Aranjuez 13 June 1931) was a Spanish painter, poet, journalist, collector and playwright. He was one of the leaders of the Catalan ''modernisme'' movement. He created more than a ...
i Prats (Barcelona, 1861 – Aranjuez, 1931) was asked by his paternal grandfather and godfather, Jaume Rusiñol, to continue the family tradition and become a cotton manufacturer. Instead, the young Rusiñol chose to enter the Catalan and Spanish art scene. A painter, narrator, collector, dramatist, amateur archaeologist, journalist and key figure of the Modernista movement, Santiago Rusiñol conceived of art as a priesthood and of the artist as the chosen one who, due to an ineluctable calling, is predestined to the sacrifice of living his ideal to the ultimate consequences. It was from Sitges that Rusiñol spread his theory of Total Art, of art as a new religion. the celebration of the Festes Modernistes (1892–1899), the building of the Cau Ferrat (1893–1894) and the inauguration of the monument to El Greco (1898) made Sitges the Mecca of Modernisme and Rusiñol the high priest of his new movement that aspired to transform society through culture. Thanks to this, Rusiñol was able to build up his own personal mythos. Rusiñol arrived in Sitges in October 1891 and stayed there until January 1892. In the months that followed he went back frequently (that same year, he organised what would later be known as the first Festa Modernista), until in the spring of 1893 he decided to buy a little fisherman's house next to the sea in the Sant Joan district. The last owner of the house, who had died decades before, had left it in her will to Our Lord God with the intention that the income from the house should be used for saying mass for her soul and those of her predecessors. In view of this unusual situation, an application had to be made to the Ecclesiastical Court of the Diocese of Barcelona for authorisation of the sale, which was finally completed on 30 July 1893. Rusiñol paid 1000 pesetas for the house and another 2000 to have it knocked down so a new one could be built to serve as a home and studio. The plan was commissioned from the architect Francesc Rogent, who incorporated in the façade the large Gothic windows from Sitges's old castle, recently demolished to make way for the new Town Hall. Rusiñol's home and studio, inaugurated a few months later, inherited the name of Cau Ferrat from the studio in Barcelona the artist had shared until then with his friend
Enric Clarasó Enric Clarasó i Daudí (14 September 1857, Sant Feliu del Racó, now a suburb of Barcelona – 1941, Barcelona) was a modernist Catalan sculptor. Biography He was born into a family of artisans.Noel Clarsó. ''Clarasó. Col•lecció Gent nostr ...
. Rusiñol soon realized that there was not enough room, however, and in May 1894 he bought the house next door to complete the building of the Cau Ferrat as it exists today. The following September he moved his collection of wrought iron there from Barcelona, and on 4 November, in the course of the third Festa Modernista, there was another inauguration which was a much bigger and more splendid affair than the first as the artist timed it to coincide with the arrival of two pictures by El Greco he had bought a few months earlier in Paris. Although he spent long periods there between 1894 and 1899, Rusiñol’s ultimate intention was not to live comfortably there so much as to create a personal collection of art. That was how the Cau Ferrat became one of the favourite gathering-places for the bohemians of the end of the century. The list of well-known figures of the time who set foot in the rooms of the Cau includes
Joan Maragall Joan Maragall i Gorina (; 10 October 1860 in Barcelona – 20 December 1911) was a Spanish poet, journalist and translator, the foremost member of the ''modernisme'' movement in literature. His manuscripts are preserved in the Joan Maragall ...
,
Emilia Pardo Bazán Emilia Pardo Bazán y de la Rúa-Figueroa (16 September 185112 May 1921), countess of Pardo Bazán, was a Spanish novelist, journalist, literary critic, poet, playwright, translator, editor and professor. She is known for introducing naturalis ...
, the Belgian musicians
Eugène Ysaÿe Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe (; 16 July 185812 May 1931) was a Belgian virtuoso violinist, composer, and conductor. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tsar". Legend of the Ysaÿe violin Eugène Ysaÿe ...
and
Ernest Chausson Amédée-Ernest Chausson (; 20 January 1855 – 10 June 1899) was a French Romantic composer who died just as his career was beginning to flourish. Life Born in Paris into an affluent bourgeois family, Chausson was the sole surviving child of a ...
,
Àngel Guimerà Àngel Guimerà y Jorge (6 May 1845 or 6 May 1847 or 1849 – 18 July 1924), known also as Ángel Guimerá, was a Spanish Nobel-nominated writer in the Catalan language. His work is known for bringing together under romantic aspects the main el ...
,
Benito Pérez Galdós Benito Pérez Galdós (May 10, 1843 – January 4, 1920) was a Spanish Spanish Realist literature, realist novelist. He was the leading literary figure in 19th-century Spain, and some scholars consider him second only to Miguel de Cervantes ...
,
Víctor Balaguer Víctor is a Spanish masculine given name, equivalent to Victor in English and Vítor in Portuguese. Notable people with the given name include: *Víctor Cabrera (Argentine footballer) *Víctor Cabrera (Chilean footballer) * Víctor Hugo Cabrera, ...
,
Ángel Ganivet Ángel Ganivet García (13 December 1865 in Granada, Spain – 29 November 1898 in Riga) was a Spanish writer and diplomat. He was considered a precursor to the Generation of '98. On 29 November 1898, disillusioned in love, Ganivet drowned himse ...
,
Enrique Granados Pantaleón Enrique Joaquín Granados y Campiña (27 July 1867 – 24 March 1916), commonly known as Enric Granados in Catalan or Enrique Granados in Spanish, was a composer of classical music, and concert pianist from Catalonia, Spain. ...
,
Narcís Oller Narcís Oller i de Moragas (; 10 August 1846, in Valls – 26 July 1930, in Barcelona) was a Catalan writer, most noted for the novels ''La papallona'' (The Butterfly) which appeared with a foreword by Émile Zola in the French translation; his m ...
, and
Manuel de Falla Manuel de Falla y Matheu (, 23 November 187614 November 1946) was an Andalusian Spanish composer and pianist. Along with Isaac Albéniz, Francisco Tárrega, and Enrique Granados, he was one of Spain's most important musicians of the first hal ...
. On his death, Rusiñol left the building of the Cau Ferrat and all the collections it contained to the town of Sitges, with the condition that it be made a public museum, which was inaugurated on 16 April 1933. Rusiñol’s decision to leave the Cau to the people of Sitges closed the circle begun that far-off night of 5 January 1892, when the artist said in the Fonda Subur that he wanted to take with him in his pictures a souvenir of what he had seen here. In each of the items to be seen in the Cau Ferrat there is a bit of Santiago Rusiñol’s life and art. Including them all is an almost impossible undertaking and something that exceeds the aims of this visitor’s guide, whose purpose is just to give an overall view of the man and bring him within reach of those people entering the Cau Ferrat for the first time and thinking it might be just an ordinary museum.


Collections


Paintings and drawings

The Cau Ferrat's collection of paintings and drawings, along with ironwork, is the largest in terms of the number of items. It contains those works by Rusiñol that the artist chose to hold onto all his life and for which he felt a special affection. Furthermore, many of the leading artists of Catalonia of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are represented:
Ramon Casas Ramon Casas i Carbó (; 4 January 1866 – 29 February 1932) was a Catalan artist. Living through a turbulent time in the history of his native Barcelona, he was known as a portraitist, sketching and painting the intellectual, economic, and ...
,
Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
,
Arcadi Mas i Fondevila Arcadi Mas i Fondevila, or Fontdevila (12 November 1852 in Barcelona – 31 January 1934 in Sitges), was a Catalan painter and graphic artist. Biography He was the son of a tailor. His father recognized his artistic talent at an early age ...
,
Isidre Nonell Isidre Nonell i Monturiol (; es, Isidro Nonell y Monturiol; 30 November 1872 – 21 February 1911) was a Spanish artist known for his expressive portrayal of socially marginalized individuals in late 19th-century Barcelona. Life Isidre Non ...
,
Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa (1871–1959), known in Catalan as Hermenegild (or Hermen) Anglada Camarasa, was a Catalan and Balearic Spanish painter. Life and career Born in Barcelona, he studied there at the Llotja School. His early work had ...
,
Ramon Pichot Ramon Pichot Gironès (; 1871 – 1 March 1925) was a Catalan and Spanish artist. He painted in an impressionist style. He was a good friend of Pablo Picasso and an early mentor to young Salvador Dalí. Dalí met Pichot in Cadaqués, Spain, w ...
, etc. Some were friends of Rusiñol. The paintings and drawings in the Cau reflect its owner’s tastes as well as the artistic trends in vogue at that time: impressionism, modernism, symbolism, etc. Most of the works are by the artist himself. The tour of the collection follows the order of the rooms: Entrance Hall, Kitchen/Dining-Room, Sala del Brollador (Fountain room), Office, Living-Room and Recess, Staircase and Great Hall.


Ironwork

Rusiñol’s reputation as a collector of ironwork preceded his fame as a painter and his popularity as a dramatist. Thanks to Rusiñol and a small group of antique ironwork collectors (amongst them several of friends of his who shared his obsession), the art of wrought iron was no longer seen as the expression of a lesser creative activity and became a subject for study. At the same time, it underwent an important revaluation which, like in many other arts and crafts, showed itself especially in Modernista architecture (e.g. the buildings designed by Gaudí, Puig i Cadafalch or Domènech i Montaner).


Glassware

Unlike the collection of ironwork, part of which already decorated the walls of the studio-workshop in Barcelona that Santiago Rusiñol shared with Enric Clarasó, the collection of glass arrived in Sitges after the Cau Ferrat was built. It does not make up a uniform whole so much as two large collections with a total of almost 400 items acquired by Rusiñol at two different moments in his life. In the Great Hall is found the collection of glass from modern times, while the Sala del Brollador is the setting for the archaeological or antique glass. The different origin of the items and the wide time-scale they cover mean that a lot of the different techniques used in working this material in the course of history are present.


Furniture and sculpture

On entering the Cau Ferrat for the first time, the visitor sees the large number of items the museum houses and the horror vacui that presides over the whole building, for which reason many items are only glanced at or even go unnoticed. Amongst the items that are most often missed are the furniture and sculptures, which are often considered simple decorative complements of no intrinsic value.


Ceramics

In the course of his life, Santiago Rusiñol put together a considerable collection of ceramics which today is concentrated mainly in two of the rooms on the ground floor of the Cau Ferrat, the Kitchen/Dining-room and the Sala del Brollador. Here the visitor will find a varied selection of more than 200 items ranging from the fourteenth century to the nineteenth century, mainly plates and dishes, but also bowls, pharmaceutical jars, washbasins, fruit-stands, pitchers, soup tureens and various tiled panels. These items come from very varied origins. Catalan potteries account for about a quarter of the collection, although the main pottery-making centres of Valencia, Aragon, Castile, Andalusia and Murcia are also represented. The collection is completed with a few items from Majorca, Italy and Florence.


See also

*
Maricel Museum The Maricel Museum is a museum located in the centre of Sitges; reopened after a major refurbishment in 2015. The Maricel Museum is part of the Barcelona Provincial Council Local Museum Network. Content In 1969, the Barcelona Provincial Corporatio ...
*
Can Llopis Romanticism Museum The Can Llopis Romanticism Museum ( ca, Museu Romàntic Can Llopis) is a museum located in Neoclassical architecture, Neoclassical-style building in the centre of Sitges and is part of the Barcelona Provincial Council Local Museum Network. Histor ...
*
Santiago Rusiñol Santiago Rusiñol i Prats (, ; Barcelona 25 February 1861 – Aranjuez 13 June 1931) was a Spanish painter, poet, journalist, collector and playwright. He was one of the leaders of the Catalan ''modernisme'' movement. He created more than a ...


References


External links

*
Local Museum Network site

Cau Ferrat Museum at Google Cultural Institute
{{Authority control Barcelona Provincial Council Local Museum Network Modernisme architecture in Catalonia Art museums and galleries in Catalonia Sitges Biographical museums in Spain Decorative arts museums in Spain