Fantasia de l'Ebre II (Ebre Fantasy II)

Fantasia de l'Ebre II (Ebre Fantasy II), painted around 1907 and held at the Reina Sofía, is one of a series of works Mir produced around the River Ebro in which direct landscape observation tilts toward something closer to visionary experience. The word 'Fantasia' in the title is explicit: Mir is acknowledging that these are not straightforward transcriptions of a river valley but personal transformations of visual sensation into colour fantasy. The Ebro, Spain's longest river by volume, flows through regions of dramatic gorge and agricultural plain between the Pyrenees and its delta on the Mediterranean; Mir was drawn to the river's particular quality of reflective water and the intense chromatic contrasts of its limestone gorges and green vegetation under Aragonese and Catalan light. The 'II' suggests this was part of an explicit series, a common Mir practice of returning to the same motif across multiple canvases to exhaust its expressive possibilities. The Reina Sofía's acquisition of this work as part of its collection of pre-Civil War Spanish art positions Mir as a significant precursor within the Spanish modernist tradition.

In this Ebro fantasy, the river's reflective surface becomes a mirror that doubles and destabilises the landscape above it. Mir uses strong chromatic contrasts — the greens of riverside vegetation against the ochres and reds of exposed earth and rock — building these in separate, distinct strokes rather than blending. The water passages are his freest painting: near-abstract configurations of reflected sky, vegetation, and deep shadow.