La Batalla de Tetuan

La Batalla de Tetuán, begun 1862, canvas, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya — this monumental canvas, unfinished at Fortuny's death, was the primary commission the Diputació de Barcelona gave him to document the Hispano-Moroccan War of 1860. Fortuny had accompanied Spanish forces as an official artist in 1860, filling sketchbooks with observations of North African terrain, military equipment, and the aftermath of battle. The enormous canvas — approximately three by five metres — required sustained work across more than a decade; Fortuny worked on it intermittently while producing the cabinet pictures that made his commercial reputation. The MNAC's preservation of this canvas in an unfinished state is among the most important documents in Spanish nineteenth-century painting: it shows Fortuny's compositional thinking across a vast area, with finished passages alongside raw canvas, demonstrating his working method at the largest scale.

Oil on large canvas, unfinished, showing different stages of execution across the surface. The contrast between completed passages — figures, foreground details — and broadly blocked-in or unpainted areas reveals Fortuny's working sequence: establishing the overall composition first, then developing individual areas to completion. Military subjects at this scale require careful management of ground plane, figure groups, and atmospheric recession.