Indian Woman in Special Attire (India en traje de gala)

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LACMA's New Vicente Albán Paintings from Ecuador

Back in 1996, when I organized my first exhibition of Spanish colonial art in New York City, I included a group of fascinating works portraying racial types from Ecuador. The paintings were part of a set of six canvases, four of which had just been acquired by a private collector. The whereabouts of the two missing canvases was at the time unknown. Inscribed with the numeral 1 in the lower center, it was clear that this set was the first of two...

Restoring LACMA’s New Vicente Albán Paintings from Ecuador

In May 2014 LACMA acquired two important paintings by Vicente Albán, an 18th-century master from Ecuador. Over the past few months the museum’s painting conservators and scientists have carefully examined the works, using various tools such as high magnification, X-radiography, and infrared reflectography...

Indian Woman in Special Attire (India en traje de gala)

Ecuador, circa 1783
Paintings
Oil on canvas; from a set of 6
Unframed: 32 × 41 5/8 in. (81.3 × 105.7 cm); framed: 36 1/4 × 47 × 1 3/4 in. (92.08 × 119.38 × 4.45 cm)
Purchased with funds provided by the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund (M.2014.89.2)
Not currently on public view

Provenance

Addison Mizner, Palm Beach, Florida, c....
Addison Mizner, Palm Beach, Florida, c. 1920; William Gray Warden (Warden House), West Palm Beach, Florida, 1922; Benjamin and Gertrude Shapiro, Palm Beach, Florida, 1945; by inheritance to their granddaughter Sheryl Greenberg, 1969–70; Sotheby’s, New York, May 28–29, 2014, lot 60; LACMA, 2014.
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Label

This painting and its companion (see M.2014.89.1) present richly dressed figures next to giant tropical fruits to symbolize the abundance o

...

This painting and its companion (see M.2014.89.1) present richly dressed figures next to giant tropical fruits to symbolize the abundance of the land. Such images participated in a long tradition in Europe of representing non-Western peoples, and the precise botanical renditions responded to taxonomic impulses fostered by the Enlightenment.

This painting combines ancient Indigenous costume elements—a silver tupu (pin) fastening her lliclla (mantle), a band of tocapu (geometric rank motifs), and a small pouch—with elements of European dress.


From exhibition Archive of the World, 2022 (for more information see the catalogue entry by Ilona Katzew in the accompanying publication, cat. no. 45, pp. 205–10)
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Bibliography

  • Katzew, Ilona, ed. Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800: Highlights from LACMA’s Collection. Exh. Cat. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: DelMonico Books/D.A.P., 2022.
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Exhibition history

  • Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800 Los Angeles, CA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, June 12, 2022 - October 30, 2022
  • Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800 Nashville, TN, Frist Art Museum, October 20, 2023 - January 28, 2024