Buy tickets
Buy ticketsSitges opens a door to their seafaring days by the hand of the Emerencià Roig Collection
Can Rocamora, the exhibition hall of Cau Ferrat and Museu Maricel of Sitges will host the exhibition by Emerencià Roig. “”From the sea to the paper,” a cultural activity that values one of the most singular collections of Museums of Sitges and that brings an exceptional witness that describes the seafaring and fishing past of this town and the entire country. “
Emerencià Roig. From the sea to the paper..” was organized by Museums of Sitges and the curator is Pere Izquierdo. The exhibition that will be inaugurated tomorrow Friday –will open the coming October and constitutes by itself the prelude of Can Falç’s permanent exhibition.
Emerencià Roig. From the sea to the paper..” displays a complete selection of drawings that Roig i Raventós produced all along his life. The drawings are a legacy with an extraordinary value covering the seafaring world of the 19th Century. Roig documented all this world, being fully aware that it was on the verge of disappearance. The exhibition places the selection of drawings in a context using some model boats, pictures, books, publications and other objects from the traditional seafaring and fishing world, that evidence the ethnographic intentionality of the author. We are dealing with 131 drawings and objects, that allow a close approximation to the seafaring and fishing world before the transition to modernity at the turn of 19th and 20th centuries. Almost all works exposed belong to the “Col·lecció de Marineria Emerencià Roig i Raventós”, but there are some pieces that belong to the Santiago Rusiñol Library.
The exhibition covers two floors of Can Rocamora (the exhibition hall and the old kitchen of the building) and is the new bet of Museus de Sitges after “Ramon Casas, a long yearned modernity, that during three months transformed the three floors of Museu Maricel in the stage of the works of Casas and contemporary artists, with a high degree of sucess both in public as in projection. (Now, with the reopening of Maricel Museum (that exhibits eleven new works in the permanent exhibition), Can Rocamora will assume the condition of exhibition hall thanks to this showing.
The drawings presented by Emerencià Roig. “From the sea to the paper” are extraordinary works with all kinds of details describing the maritime world at that time, from professions to skills. We are dealing with drawings by the same artist, drawn on many occasions with ink and watercolour and charcoal on others. The drawings depict boats of every kind, presenting a veritable catalog of shipbuilding during nineteenth century: corvettes, brigs, barbeques, polacres, but also strange crafts ... such as the ones known as “mystics” or ships using sails and steam. In some cases, there are landscapes of the coast of Sitges, but also other Catalan coasts.
The Ethnographic and Documentary aim is evident while using at the same time a reduced and selected sample of objects from his collection, which allows to conceptualize his work as a scientific illustrator with paintings by Joan Roig i Soler, Josep Pineda and Francesc Martorell, and the three models of ships that are part of the his collection, “Emerencià Roig. From the sea to the paper” also exposes some objects selected as documentation in addition to his own writings.
Emerencià Roig i Raventós
Emerencià Roig i Raventós (Sitges, 1881 - Barcelona, 1935) was the son of the illuminist painter Joan Roig i Soler and brother of the doctor and novelist Josep Roig i Raventós. He obtained a degree in Pharmaceutical Studies in the University of Barcelona (1906) and eleven years later he retired from business because he suffered asthma. Roig spent all his life studying the Catalan seafaring and maritime legacy during the 19th century, doing a very exhaustive field work with sailors and fishers, and trying to gather all the information he could prior to the arrival of the impact represented by steam engines. For the Catalan maritime legacy, Roig`s work is the equivalent represented by Joan Amades –he was a former collaborator- or Ramon Violant i Simorra concerning ethnology, and Bosch-Gimpera for archeology.
His research work is preserved in a series of publications that still preserve their maximum interest, no matter all the years that have passed. His main writings are:
The increase of transatlantic navigation (1918)
The old constructions of Blanes (1919)
The forest repopulation and the Tree Festivity (1920)
From the past maritime life
Maritime vocabulary of the town of Blanes
Mountain vocabulary of the village of Moyà
Maritime vocabulary of the village of Sitges
Maritime Blanes: historical notes (1924)
Collection of terms picked at a pottery in Blanes (1925)
Fishing in Catalonia (1926)
The Catalan navy during the 19th century (1929)
Along with Joan Amades, he published the vocabulary of the art of navigation and fishing (1924) and the vocabulary of fishing (1926) and, from his knowledge of lexicography, contributed to the preparation of the General Dictionary of Catalan by providing lists of navigation and fishing.
In the philological field, also compiled various maritime vocabularies, was the contributor number 1,585 of Mn. Antoni Maria Alcover in the composition of Catalan-Valencian-Balearic dictionary. In 1923 he was awarded by the Institute of Catalan Studies as the author of the best maritime vocabulary.
A year before his death, he published a fundamental work for understanding everything local in Sitges, Sitges dels nostres avis (1934), which has been edited several times by the Sitges Historical Studies Group and has become one of the bestselling books about local topics.
