Blooming Branches

Blooming Branches, by the Catalan Modernista artist Josefa Texidor i Torres, aka Pepita Texidor (1865-1914), is also referred to as Ramas floridas or Branques en flor. In the late 19th- early 20th-century, painting flowers was considered a ‘minor' art and suitable for the leisure time of bourgeois women. But institutional scholarship shows that Texidor was purposeful in applying this aesthetic restriction. Her watercolor paintings of flowers continued until she was encouraged by her brother, the famous painter Modest Texidor, to seek a higher-style portrait. In compositions of Blooming Branches, she furthered the art of natural illustration and introduced a professional level, which had never been present before, attracting artists and clients, such as Queen María Cristina. This is a high-quality example of Texidor’s watercolor precision technique. Instead of scientific botanical descriptions, she uses a freer and more fluid style, with a depth and lightness of tone. The wild, growing branches are distinct in a glow of the background. This work demonstrates a passion for asymmetry and a strong influence from Japonisme, one of the key elements of the Catalan Modernisme movement. Her roses smell, and her thistles prick; she can impart sensory reality to organic forms, and these things, contemporary critics, even the renowned illustrator Alexandre de Riquer, praise her for. With its mastery, Texidor entered the world of international fame and won a silver medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. After her death, she was immortalized in the artistic world with the erection of the first public statue of a non-royal woman in the Parc de la Ciutadella in Barcelona. Her work has been incorporated in some of the most widely used Catalan databases and continues to serve as a guide for today's art historians in mapping the reappropriation of women artists in Spanish art history.