Flores

Flores (Flowers) of 1910 belongs to the final phase of Nonell's brief career, when he turned to floral still lifes alongside his herring and fruit compositions. Though flowers might seem a gentler subject than his Roma figures or widows, Nonell brought the same intensity of paint application and chromatic boldness to the genre. Flower painting in the Post-Impressionist tradition — from van Gogh's sunflowers to Renoir's roses — had been established as a vehicle for pure chromatic experimentation and emotional directness. Nonell's flowers sit within this tradition while retaining his distinctively Spanish palette: hot, saturated reds and oranges against deep shadow backgrounds that recall the drama of Goya and the austerity of Zurbarán. The MNAC holding of this work places it within the institution's strong representation of Catalan modernism at its most vigorous. Nonell died just a year after painting this, leaving a body of work of extraordinary concentration and force.

The flowers are rendered with saturated strokes of red, orange, and yellow against a deep-toned background. Paint is applied thickly and directly, with each stroke contributing to chromatic vibration rather than carefully describing individual petals.