The Painter's Children in the Japanese Room

Painted in 1874, the year of Fortuny's death, this canvas shows his two young children — Mariano and María Luisa — at play in the Japanese Room of his Roman studio. Fortuny was a passionate collector of Asian decorative objects, weapons, textiles, and lacquerwork long before japonisme became fashionable in European studios, and the room he assembled in Rome was considered one of the most remarkable private collections of its kind. The painting thus functions simultaneously as a domestic portrait and as a document of mid-nineteenth-century collector culture. The children are depicted with the same lively spontaneity Fortuny applied to his animal and street studies, their figures small against the accumulated treasures of their father's taste. Posthumously exhibited, the work was recognized as among his most personal statements — a counterweight to the commercial orientalist productions through which he earned his reputation. It entered the Prado as part of the bequest that preserved the core of his estate.

Fortuny sacrifices spatial clarity in favor of surface incident, allowing decorative objects and children to compete equally for the eye. The Japanese screens and lacquer panels are rendered with the same energetic brushwork as the figures, refusing the hierarchy of subject over setting. Light falls diffusely, eliminating harsh shadows that might structure the composition too rigidly.