The Battle of Tetouan (detail) 1862

Mariano Fortuny Marsal painted this scene, a detail from The Battle of Tetouan, using oil on canvas. Fortuny was a master of the bravura brushstroke, and here that quality is on full display. Look closely, and you’ll see that the artist has rendered the scene, not through careful outlines or modeling, but through a dense accumulation of discrete marks. This is how he conjures up the costumes of the combatants, the bodies of the fallen, and even the landscape itself. It is as if the artist is less concerned with the grim realities of war, than he is with the sheer materiality of his medium. This wasn’t reportage, it was something else - a demonstration of what paint could do. And in its emphasis on artistic process, and the handling of materials, the work anticipates a modernist sensibility. Fortuny directs your attention to the ‘how’ as much as the ‘what’ of the painting.