Bonhams 1793 : Carlos Nadal (1917-1998) Mar azul

Mar azul
signed 'cNadal' (lower right); signed again, dated and titled 'cNadal 75/ Mar Azul' (on the reverse); and stamped with artist's atelier stamp (once on the reverse and twice on the stretcher)
oil and mixed media on paper laid down on canvas
53.7 x 64.7cm (21 1/8 x 25 1/2in).
Painted in 1975

Sold for £16,875 inc. premium

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Duncalfe Galleries, Harrogate and London.
Private collection, England.

LITERATURE
J. Duncalfe, Carlos Nadal 1917-1998, An English Perspective, Harrogate, 2010 (illustrated p.120).

This work is sold with a photo-certificate of authenticity from Le Comité Nadal.

Nadal's characteristically joyous sense of colour and lightness of touch are shown to great effect in Mar azul. Throughout his career he was drawn to the possibilities of busy marine scenes, perhaps as a memory of views of the Seine in Paris from his boyhood and of the port at Barcelona where he moved with his family in 1921. Although the quality of the light and the intensity of the blue sea are undeniably Mediterranean, the pitched roofs and the tower at the end of a pier in Mar azul seem more likely to have been inspired by North Sea resorts such as Blankenberge and Dieppe near Nadal's home in Belgium. As he noted in an interview in 1978, 'I am Catalan, but it is in Belgium that I discovered colour. In Spain it is crushed by the sun. Here I can discern all its nuances. My life in Belgium allows me to marry a Catalan joie de vivre to the power of Flemish nature' (quoted in J. Duncalfe, op. cit., p.9, note 3).