Study

Study of 1908, held at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, belongs to the body of preparatory and exploratory work Nonell produced alongside his finished canvases, though the boundary between 'study' and finished work in his practice is deliberately blurred. Nonell used the study format to probe the expressive limits of his formal means — the weight of paint, the economy of description, the psychological charge of a face rendered with minimal information. By 1908 he had refined his approach to a high degree: the loose, dark backgrounds, the compressed tonal range, the way figures seem to materialize from shadow rather than be lit by a conventional light source. Studies like this one document his method and make clear that his apparent roughness was a considered aesthetic choice rather than unfinished work. Nonell's refusal to sentimentalise or resolve his figures into easy readability was part of his wider ethical stance: the incompleteness of the study format resonates with the social invisibility of his subjects. His work of this period stands as a crucial bridge between Symbolist-era social Naturalism and the expressive figuration that would emerge in early twentieth-century European art.

Working in the study mode, Nonell allows himself maximum expressive freedom: the paint is applied with urgency, the form described in broad tonal sweeps rather than precise drawing. The figure is concentrated in the upper canvas, with the lower portion left near-empty, creating a sense of the subject hovering in undefined space. Despite the sketch quality, the face achieves a compelling psychological focus.