He studied at the
Llotja School in Barcelona and in the studio of the brothers Agapit and Venaci Vallmitjana. He was also a disciple of
Rossend Nobas, with whom he worked for two years, and the painter Martí i Alsina, in the school of fine arts in Barcelona. When he was 16 years old he obtained a Fortuny grant, awarded by the
City Council, and moved to
Rome, where as well as producing the works that were mandatory under the terms of his grant, he made an initial model for an equestrian statue of the
count of Barcelona Ramon Berenguer the Great. This work earned Llimona the renewal of his grant for a further month, enabling him to remodel the statue at its definitive scale. , Barcelona The work was shown at the
Exposición Universal de Barcelona (1888), where it won a gold medal, the highest award given by the international jury for sculpture. The original became the property of the City Council, in return for the modest amount of the grant (3,600
pesetas) and it can now be seen in the Barcelona square named after the count. Almost at the same time Llimona won a competition for a statue of Ramon Berenguer the Elder, which, cast in bronze, is amongst the monuments which stand in the Saló de Sant Joan in Barcelona, and in spite of sending in his work late, he won a resounding moral victory in the competition held in
Reus (
Tarragona) for an equestrian statue of general
Joan Prim i Prats. (
MNAC) Josep Llimona also sculpted a large number of works in other genres, including
Desconsol, shown in the international fine arts exhibition held in Barcelona in 1907 and acquired for the city's municipal museum;
Idil·li, in a private collection in Argentina; the funerary monument of Señora de Chopitea (
Buenos Aires); the group
Amor a la infància, in the Bosc Schools on
Montjuïc, and the great monument to Doctor Robert, originally placed in the Plaça de la Universitat in Barcelona and now in the Plaça Tetuan. He also worked in the applied arts. Notable examples in this area are the
crosier for the bishop of
Vic, a coffee service that was to be offered as a gift for a royal wedding, and various pieces of jewellery whose artistic value exceeds the intrinsic value, although the latter is still considerable. Also, as a
draughtsman, Llimona produced a large number of excellent life studies. He was one of the founders, along with his brother Joan Llimona i Bruguera, of the
Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc in 1892. ==Notable works==