From the series Ports of France (De la serie Puertos de Francia) View of the City and Port of Bayonne (Vista de la villa y puerto de Bayona)

Spanish Colonial Art
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New Acquisitions in Spanish Colonial Art

March 7, 2019
When we opened our new Latin American art galleries last summer, our pre-Columbian collection drew much attention, and rightly so—LACMA boasts a rich collection and Jorge Pardo's daring installation reinvigorated the discussion about the display of art. But what you may not have heard as much about is something the museum is doing for the first time in its history …

From the series Ports of France (De la serie Puertos de Francia) View of the City and Port of Bayonne (Vista de la villa y puerto de Bayona)

Mexico, circa 1771
Paintings
Oil on canvas
Unframed: 39 1/2 × 59 3/8 in. (100.3 × 150.8 cm); framed: 43 5/8 × 64 1/2 × 3 in. (110.81 × 163.83 × 7.62 cm)
Purchased with funds provided by the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund (M.2007.197.5)
Latin American Art
Not currently on public view

Curator Notes

Provenance

Possibly Viceroy Carlos Francisco de Croix, Marquis of Croix (r....
Possibly Viceroy Carlos Francisco de Croix, Marquis of Croix (r. 1766–71), 1771; private collection, Spain; Galerie Steinitz, Saint-Ouen and Paris, 1990s; Christie’s, New York, October 19, 2007, lots 97–99; LACMA, 2007.
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Label

Few works illustrate the awareness of Mexican artists and their engagement with recent developments in European art better than Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz’s imposing series of vedute (views;

...

Few works illustrate the awareness of Mexican artists and their engagement with recent developments in European art better than Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz’s imposing series of vedute (views; see also M.2007.197.1, M.2007.197.2, M.2007.197.3, M.2007.197.4, and M.2007.197.6). He painted two sets after Claude-Joseph Vernet’s suite on the Ports of France (1754–65). Vernet’s monumental paintings were commissioned for Louis XV (r. 1715–74) as a sweeping piece of French propaganda. The series became known through prints by Charles-Nicolas Cochin and Jacques-Philippe Le Bas, completed in 1767.

Remarkably, Morlete Ruiz had access to the prints barely two years later, and from 1769 to 1772, the year of his death, he painted more than twenty canvases after them. One set (today in Malta) includes two views of Mexico City. These local addenda demonstrate Morlete Ruiz’s inventiveness, as well as his desire to inscribe the set within the context of New Spanish painting and, conversely, to inscribe New Spain within the panorama of European geography.


From exhibition Archive of the World, 2022 (for more information see the catalogue entry by Ilona Katzew in the accompanying publication, cat. no. 58, pp. 238–45)
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Bibliography

  • Katzew, Ilona, ed. Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790: Pinxit Mexici. Exh. Cat. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Mexico City: Fomento Cultural Banamex; New York: DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2017.
  • Katzew, Ilona, ed. Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790: Pinxit Mexici. Exh. Cat. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Mexico City: Fomento Cultural Banamex; New York: DelMonico Books/Prestel, 2017.
  • 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.
  • Katzew, Ilona. “Valiant Styles: New Spanish Painting, 1700–1785.” In Painting in Latin America, 1550–1820, edited by Luisa Elena Alcalá and Jonathan Brown. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014, pp. 148–203.

  • Ilona Katzew, “New Acquisitions in Spanish Colonial Art,” Unframed, March 17, 2009, https://unframed.lacma.org/2009/03/17/french-harbors-painted-in-new-spain.

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Exhibition history

  • Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790: Pinxit Mexici Los Angeles, CA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, November 19, 2017 - March 18, 2018
  • 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
  • Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790: Pinxit Mexici Los Angeles, CA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, November 19, 2017 - March 18, 2018
  • 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
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