In 1969, the Barcelona Provincial Corporation bought the building of Maricel de Mar to house the heterogeneous collection belonging to Doctor Jesús Pérez-Rosales (Manila, 1896-Barcelona, 1989), a well known gynaecologist and enthusiastic collector. A year later the Museu Maricel was inaugurated.
Made up of more than 3 000 items of varying origin, the collection includes Romanesque murals (like the Christ Pantocrator from Santa Maria de Cap d'Aran, dated in the twelfth century), examples of Gothic painting on wood (amongst them two pieces from the altarpiece of Sant Pere de Cubells), Renaissance carvings and altarpieces, Modernista and Noucentista sculptures by Josep Llimona (Distress), Enric Clarasóhead of Child Crying, Joan Rebull (Rest, Dawn and Gypsy Child), Josep Clarà, Josep Cañas and Pablo Gargallo (The Reaper), six allegorical murals by Josep M. Sert on the First World War, along with numerous pictures and items of furniture, precious metal, ceramics and porcelain.
Pere Serra. Panel of the Nativity, from an altarpiece from the church of Sant Pere de Cubells, c. 1400
Since 1995 the Museu Maricel has also housed the "Vila de Sitges" Collection of art, which occupies several rooms on the second floor. In them can be seen some fifty works by Sitges artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and by others who had close links with the town during the same period.
This art collection takes the visitor on an evocative tour of the last two centuries of Catalan painting, from Joaquim Espalter (born in Sitges in 1809) to Pere Pruna (who spent long periods here during the 1940s and 1950s).
There are also several works by Santiago Rusiñol, in particular Twilight, painted in Biniaraix (Majorca), and the portraits of local figures in Sitges such as Salvador Robert, Pere Forment and Lluís Magrans. There is an exceptional portrait by Ramon Casas of Charles Deering, the man who had the Maricel complex built at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Adjoining the "Vila de Sitges" Collection of Art is the Collection on Maritime themes put together by Emerencià Roig i Raventós (Sitges, 1881-Barcelona), 19359[clarification needed] and donated by his brother to Sitges Town Hall. Roig was an important specialist in maritime themes and the author of books like La pesca a Catalunya (1926), La marina catalana del vuit-cents (1929) and Sitges del nostres avis (1934).
The collection consist of a variety of models and miniature boats, drawings and engravings, maps, nautical instruments (sextants, compasses, etc.) and fishing tackle (lobster pots, long lines, hooks, needles for mending nets, etc.), which were once used by fishermen the length of the Catalan coast.
^Museus i Centres de Patrimoni Cultural a Catalunya (in Catalan). Departament de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya. 2001. p. 110. ISBN84-393-5437-1.
