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Cau Ferrat Museum

Montmartre Cemetery

Montmartre Cemetery, Santiago Rusiñol, 1891, Paris, oil on canvas. Cau Ferrat Museum.

 

Montmartre Cemetery, Santiago Rusiñol, 1891, Paris, oil on canvas. Cau Ferrat Museum.

 

Cemeteries, burials, the nearby presence of death in general, were all fairly common subjects in the pictorial and literary work of Santiago Rusiñol, especially in the decade of the 1890s.

Montmartre Cemetery was painted in 1891. It is an extraordinary painting where Rusiñol, by means of a play of light sustained through three tones (gray, ochre and white) is able to create a saddened mood.

The painting depicts a descending perspective, taken not far from the artist’s apartment at the Moulin de la Galette. The downward perspective gives the scene a sense of being off in the distance, accenting its depersonalized effect.

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