The Print Collector

Dating from 1866, this cabinet picture of a collector examining prints captures a milieu Fortuny knew intimately: the world of connoisseurs, dealers, and antiquarians who frequented the markets and auction rooms of Rome, Paris, and Barcelona. Fortuny was himself a passionate collector, and his studio in Rome became a gathering place for European collectors who came as much to see his acquisitions as his paintings. The print collector as subject had a distinguished history in Dutch and Flemish genre painting, but Fortuny approaches the theme without the moralizing overtones his predecessors sometimes attached to the image of the connoisseur absorbed in his acquisitions. The figure's absorption in the print before him mirrors the absorption Fortuny hoped to induce in viewers of his own work — a concentrated attention to craft and surface that was simultaneously the subject and the method of the painting.

Interior light concentrated on the print being examined creates a natural focal point, with the surrounding objects subordinated in warm shadow. Fortuny renders the texture of old prints and worn wooden furniture with the same empathetic precision he brings to textiles and ceramics in his other cabinet pieces. Glazes over a warm ground produce the luminous shadows typical of his mature interior scenes.