The story
The Círculo del Liceo is primarily a private club, founded in 1847 alongside the Gran Teatre del Liceu opera house on La Rambla and sharing its building. Its rooms also hold one of Barcelona's best-preserved modernista interiors, and that is what brings art lovers here.
The heart of it is the Rotunda. Around 1902 the painter Ramon Casas, a leading figure of Catalan modernisme, redecorated the room with mahogany, leaded glass and twelve large canvases, each pairing women with a kind of music, from opera to popular song. The club also owns La Sargantain, painted in 1907. Its sitter is Júlia Peraire, a young woman who sold lottery tickets in the Plaça de Catalunya when Casas met her in 1906. She became his model, his companion and eventually his wife, and he kept painting her for the rest of his life. Here she wears the yellow dress that made the picture famous.
When fire destroyed the opera house in January 1994, the club's rooms came through undamaged and stayed open while the theatre was rebuilt. Membership is private, so most outsiders see the Rotunda on guided tours offered with the theatre or on occasional open days.
