Who is the mayor of Ca l’Umbert?

The preparation of the exhibition Portraits, which the Museum will inaugurate as soon as it can restart its public activity, has caused us to review the information available from some of the paintings we have incorporated in the exhibit. One is the portrait of the mayor of Ca l’Umbert.

It is an oil painting portraying an elderly man sitting on a chair and holding a Mayor’s baton in his hand, indicating that he has a position, probably that of a mayor. It is unknown when this paint went to the Museum collections, who donated it and where it came from.

When in 1993 the Josep M. Cuyàs Archive was donated to the Museum, a photograph of this painting was located in its photographic collection, where, behind it, Mr. Cuyàs had scored “mayor of Ca l’Umbert”. Looking for the names of the mayors of the first half of the 19th century, we found Bartomeu Rovira Mandri (circa 1790-185?), who was mayor for two brief stages in the years 1833 and 1835, and we think he is the character portrayed, precisely by her relationship with the house today known as Ca l’Umbert.

Ca l’Umbert is a farmhouse located on Santa Barbara Street. This name, however, is relatively recent. Until the early years of the twentieth century, this house was known by the name of Can Rovira, as it was a family of this last name that had built it in the late eighteenth century. The aforementioned Bartomeu Rovira was the son of this house, so it should come as no surprise that Josep M. Cuyàs used the name of the house of the Mayor, Ca l’Umbert, to name him.

Portrait of the mayor of Ca l’Umbert, Bartomeu Rovira Mandri. Inv. 2322