View of Cadaques with the Shadow of Mount Pani (1917)

View of Cadaques with the Shadow of Mount Pani (1917)
Salvador Dalí embraced his Mediterranean homeland, painting it repeatedly throughout his career. Dalí was only thirteen years old when he painted View of Cadaques with the Shadow of Mount Pani, a charming impressionistic view of Cadaques.

This tiny fishing and resort town on the Mediterranean is where the Dalí family spent their summers. This painting, the earliest oil in the museum's collection, clearly demonstrates the emergence of a precocious young talent.

Salvador taught himself how to paint in the impressionist style, using small dabs of unmixed paint to create the sensation of seeing the entire landscape in a single glance.

If the texture of this work appears rough, it is because it was painted on burlap. Burlap was readily available in Cadaques because the fishermen of the village used it to keep the wood of their boats moist. Dalí cut it from the sacking of the boats and had an infinite supply of canvas at his disposal.

Dalí used a deep pink to capture the glow of the sun as it sets over his sleepy village. Mount Pani, the mountain that towers over Cadaques, casts its shadow across the bay, rushing to touch the cluster of whitewashed houses on the shore.

This same enigmatic shadow appears in Dalí's surrealist works as well, and can be seen in the background of The Average Bureaucrat in the surrealist gallery.