Joaquín Furnó Abad
Spanish, 1832-1918
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Joaquím Furnó i Abad was an engraver and intaglio artist who worked on medals and prints.
Trained at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, he completed his studies in Paris, where he moved in 1861 to perfect his skills in intaglio engraving of medals. A reminder of his time in the French capital is his view of the Place de la Concorde in Paris, an etching of which is preserved at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando.
He received an honorable mention at the 1864 National Fine Arts Exhibition, where he competed with the medal awarded by the Academy of Archaeology to commemorate the change in the name of the institution created in 1844 by Basilio Sebastián Castellanos de Losada, which was renamed the Royal Academy of Archaeology and Geography of Prince Alfonso upon receiving recognition from Queen Isabel II, whose effigy appears on the obverse of the medal, a copy of which is in the National Archaeological Museum.
Chamber engraver to Infante Sebastián Gabriel de Borbón y Braganza, in 1864 he returned to Barcelona to take over the intaglio printing workshop of his brother-in-law Antonio Roca upon his death.
For the publisher Luis Tasso, he engraved, mostly from drawings by Tomás Padró, a series of prints of local devotions to the Virgin Mary represented by images on the same thrones or altars where they are venerated, including Nuestra Señora de la Consolación de Jerez de la Frontera, on a cart pulled by oxen, Nuestra Señora de la Almudena with Saint James and the apocryphal Saint Calocero, supposedly the first bishop of Madrid, the Virgin of Valverde in her sanctuary in the village of Fuencarral, the Virgin of Reposo from Seville, the Virgin of El Pino from Gran Canaria, and the Virgin of Los Milagros from Puerto de Santa María, copies of which are preserved in the Costume Museum, Center for Ethnological Heritage Research in Madrid.
In book illustration, he contributed his engravings to the embellishment of the History of Catalonia and the Crown of Aragon: written to make it known to the people, reminding them of the great deeds of their ancestors in virtue, patriotism, and arms, and to spread among all classes the love of country and the memory of its past glories by Víctor Balaguer; adorned with steel engravings, Barcelona, 1860-1863, and the edition of Don Quixote by the Biblioteca Ilustrada de Espasa, from around 1879. He is also known for several portraits, including those of Amadeo de Saboya and Francisco Pi i Margall. He contributed to the Revista ibérica de ex libris, four issues of which were published in Barcelona between 1903 and 1906, with the intaglio engravings that adorned it being printed in his workshop. In his later years, he took up the technique of photoengraving, researching new printing systems of his own creation.
His daughter, Maria Emília Furnó, was a poet and teacher.