Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa

Anglada Camarasa was born in 1871 in Barcelona; sources are inconsistent on the exact day and month, so none is stated here with confidence. From 1885 he trained at the Escola de Belles Arts, known as La Llotja, where his principal teacher is commonly cited as Modest Urgell. In 1894 he had his first solo exhibition at Sala Pares in Barcelona and that same year moved to Paris, where he continued his training at the Academie Julian through roughly 1897. His Paris years, running to about 1904, produced the ornamental, color-saturated paintings of dancers and femme-fatale subjects for which he became best known, work that drew on Spanish folk imagery filtered through a French Symbolist sensibility.

His international reputation grew through exhibitions and prizes at Rome and Buenos Aires: Christie's exhibition records cite Grand Prix awards at the 1910 international exhibition in Buenos Aires and the 1911 international exhibition in Rome. He also took part in the 1899 Esposizione Internazionale delle Belle Arti in Rome and the 1907 Venice Biennale, though awards specifically tied to those two earlier events could not be independently confirmed. In 1914 he held what is described as his last solo exhibition at La Pinacoteca in Barcelona. Around that time he settled in Port de Pollenca on the island of Mallorca, and his later career turned increasingly toward Mallorcan landscape painting.

Later honors included the Grand Cross of Alfonso X el Sabio; sources disagree on the year, with some citing 1916 and a Carmen Thyssen Museum biography grouping it with other late-career honors granted around 1954. He exhibited at the Barcelona International Exposition in 1929 and was named an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid in 1954. He is also credited in some sources with the Juan March Fine Arts Prize in 1956, the same year as his last major lifetime exhibition, at the Galeria Velazquez in Buenos Aires, though this prize could not be independently reconfirmed. He died in 1959 in Pollenca, Mallorca. Secondary sources differ on the exact day, with one biography citing 7 July 1959 and an informal social-media post citing 17 July 1959; the precise date has not been independently confirmed.

Anglada Camarasa's ornamental Symbolist style, dense color, and treatment of Spanish folk and dance subjects were well received in Paris and at the international expositions where he won prizes, and his standing in Catalan art history is affirmed by the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, which holds an archive of his material framed in its own exhibition materials as a record of the artist's working life. No verifiable verbatim critical quotation from a named critic in a major outlet could be confirmed for this profile, so none is reproduced here. His reputation rests less on a single defining review than on a consistent record of institutional recognition across Barcelona, Paris, Rome, Venice, Buenos Aires, and, later, Mallorca.

Anglada Camarasa's clearest documented auction result is Valencian girls (Grupas Valencianas), which sold for GBP 205,250 (roughly USD 332,000 at the time) at Christie's London on 2 December 2009. Other sources report a higher price, about EUR 286,700, for an unidentified portrait said to top Artnet's ranking for the artist, but the auction house, exact sale date, and full title for that result could not be confirmed, so his true all-time auction record cannot be stated with confidence. His market is thin relative to his exhibition history and prizes: works surface periodically at Sotheby's and Christie's, generally with estimates in the tens of thousands to low hundreds of thousands of pounds, and public sales are infrequent enough that any single result, including the figures above, should be read with caution rather than as a stable trend line.

There is no confirmed catalogue raisonne for Anglada Camarasa, and the strongest documentary resource identified is the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya's archive material rather than a scholarly catalogue. Current gallery representation is not clearly established: only a single source, Artur Ramon Art Gallery in Barcelona, lists the artist, and no dedicated estate representative was identified, so provenance research and direct verification through major auction houses matter more than usual. Because public sales are infrequent and even the all-time auction record is not fully settled in available sources, collectors should treat the 2009 Christie's result as one reference point among a very thin trading history, rather than assume a smooth, well-populated price record.