The Mandolin Player

Fortuny’s skill as a watercolorist became apparent early in his career, and, as his wife’s uncle Pedro de Madrazo was later to recall, “the artist used the medium of watercolor in a manner that was totally unusual and free, energetic, at odds with all convention and routine.” As a result, collectors and art dealers of the day considered Fortuny’s watercolors as important as his most exquisitely painted and highly prized oils. As the artist himself wrote in 1866 to his friend, Spanish artist Tomàs Moragas, “Goupil, the richest dealer in Paris…is buying all the watercolors I can do.” Fortuny is said to have worked on his watercolors every evening, after painting in oils in his studio during the day. His artistic style was widely imitated and highly influential on other Spanish, French, and Italian painters of the time.

Playing the mandolin became very fashionable among European aristocracy from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Thousands of young men and women of “society” took up the instrument as a pastime and those years became known as the “Golden Age” of the mandolin. Here, Fortuny uses his mastery of working with watercolors to render a beautifully dressed young woman, wearing a pale yellow satin gown with her face framed by a lace head covering. She appears to be posing for this portrait rather than playing the mandolin as she looks down with a blank stare.