The Garden of the Fortuny Residence

Fortuny moved to Granada in the summer of 1870, and late in 1871 he rented a roomy house at Realejo Bajo, below the Alhambra. His French friend the collector Baron Davillier described going in through an open patio with columns, which Fortuny used as a studio whenever he wanted to work in the open air. The garden lay on the other side of it, and this small panel, 40 by 28 centimetres, is that garden. A whitewashed wall, cypresses running off the top edge, a fountain further back.

He left for Rome in 1872 with the panel unfinished, and he died two years later. Around 1877 his brother-in-law Raimundo de Madrazo took it up and completed it, matching Fortuny's touch closely, and added two things that had not been there. A dog asleep in the foreground, and at the right his own sister Cecilia, Fortuny's widow, in morning dress with a fan and a reddish parasol. Madrazo signed it, and the Prado now gives the picture two authors and the dates 1872 to 1877.

Cecilia had lived in that house. Their son was born in Granada in May 1871, while Fortuny still had the lease.