Josep Sarquella y Escobet (1928 – 27 July 2000) was a Catalan painter specialised in marine art painting about the Costa Brava. At the age of two, his family moved to Palamós and settled near La Fosca, in a house of Modernist style, known as Villa Pepita. He made his first drawings when he was ten years old, under the guidance of the painter Francisco Vidal Palmada. After his military service he settled in Barcelona,a city where he attended the Círculo Artístico de Sant Lluc and the Real Círculo Artístico. His professional career started in 1956 as an illustrator. His first individual exhibitions were held in Vilafranca del Penedès in 1958. The next one was at Sala Rovira, in Barcelona. In addition to this, each summer he exhibited his works in Palamós, where he had a studio. With an impressionist style, defined rather by paint than by drawing, he based his works in the reflection of the Costa Brava’s light. His marine art works are characterised by their human dimension: the fishermen ans specially by the boats appearing in them. The landscape in movement appearing in his paintings transmits his knowledge of the sea, the fishing craft and the different kinds of boats. His paintings allow us to clearly identify them. Among Sarquella’s works also his oil paintings are important. In them, he depicts ships belonging to the Optimist class and in the Christmas Regatta Race, where he wanted to highlight the movement of the sales. In Palamós artistic environment, he became acquainted with painters such as Ezequiel Torroella, Pere Coll, Joan Prat and Joaquim Comes as well as with painters from Barcelona. He was president of the Círculo Artístico de Palamós. Throughout his career he won several competitions and painting prices and he received many distinctions. He held individual and collective exhibitions in Catalonia, Valencia, the Basque Country, Madrid, France, The Netherlands and Santo Domingo. In 2002 he was posthumously appointed honorary son of the city of Palamós.