Portrait of Isabel Llorach

Portrait of Isabel Llorach, at the Barcelona City Council, is one of Ramon Casas's formal female portraits from 1901, produced during the height of his reputation as the leading portraitist of Catalan society. Isabel Llorach was a member of the Barcelona cultural bourgeoisie that patronised the café Els Quatre Gats and engaged with the modernista movement centred there. Casas's portraits of women from this circle combine the fashionable chic he absorbed during his long years in Paris with an affectionate observation of individual character that made him the preferred portraitist of affluent Catalonia.

Casas renders Llorach with his characteristic linear elegance — the figure's silhouette defined by confident contour drawing — while modelling the face with carefully observed tonal gradation. His Parisian training in the manner of Whistler and Boldini informs the portrait's combination of social grace and psychological directness.