Ramón Casas y Carbo's artistic gifts revealed themselves at a very young age. He was a pupil at the Collegio Carreras and then at a private academy. At the age of 16, in 1882, he went to Paris to study with Carolus Duran. He then went to Spain and studied the Spanish masters at the Prado. During a stay in Paris up to 1894, he came into contact with Utrillo, Rusiñol and Zuloaga, among others. He maintained his contact with Paris, continuing to travel there. He exhibited portraits of children at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, of which he was a member from 1903, and was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur.

Casas settled in Barcelona and produced a considerable body of work. He was considered the leader of the young Catalan school of painting and exerted a strong influence over his contemporaries, including the young Picasso, introducing them to Impressionism and Symbolism. He was both a painter and a draughtsman. Fifteen years older than the Fauvists and Cubists, Casas' own focus was on Impressionism and Symbolist narrative. He was closer to Manet in his subjects and execution than to the Impressionists themselves. In addition to highly finished portraits, he also executed portraits in a freer, more spontaneous technique, directly painted onto lightly executed backgrounds. He is considered to be one of the most important turn-of-the-century Catalan painters; his reputation certainly benefited from his friendship with Picasso.

Ramon Casas was the central figure of the Café The Four Cats ( Els Quatre Gats). He founded it in imitation of the Cabaret of the Black Cat ( Cabaret du Chat Noir) where, at the turn of the century in Paris, foreign and local artists alike - including Picasso, Rusiñol and Utrillo - would gather. Casas painted city scenes with numerous figures, as well as many portraits of his acquaintances. He produced many drawings of local hosts. His sponeneity is manifest throughout the enormous body of his work, as much in his literary illustrations as his posters. Some of his most famous posters include Anis del Mono, Cigarrillo Paris, Papel Boer and Garage Central. His sketches and posters demonstrate the ease of Toulouse-Lautrec and the decorative quality of Mucha.

His work was shown in numerous exhibitions and competitions and won various distinctions, notably at the Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes, in which he won a third-place medal in 1892, a first in 1904, and the dedication of a room to his work in 1968, the centenary of his birth. He exhibited regularly at the Pares room from 1890. He also received distinctions abroad, including gold medals in Berlin, Munich and Vienna.

Museum and Gallery Holdings

Barcelona (Mus. Nacional d'Art de Catalunya): Self-portrait in Andalusian Costume (1883); Portrait of Señora Carbo (1888); Studio Interior After a Party (1891); Open Air (study); Paris Landscape, with a Feminine Figure Seated at a Table (1891); The Young Maria Rusiñol Denis (1893); The Sacré-Coeur in Montmartre (Le Sacré-Coeur de Montmartre) (1893); Corpus Domini, the Exit of the Santa Maria Procession; Portrait of HM Alfonso XIII (1904, study); Portrait of the Painter Ignacio Zuloaga (drawing); Self-portrait; Portrait of Pablo Ruiz Picasso; Portrait of José Maria Sert
Chicago (AI): The Racetrack
Madrid (Mus. de Arte Moderno): Garrote Vil; Barcelona (1902)
New York (Hispanic Society of America): La Santera (1915)
Sitges (Mus. Cau Ferrat): Self-portrait (1889); Hall of the Moulin de la Galette (1891, a study); Rusinol and Casas Painting (1890); Portrait of Santiago Rusiñol (1904)