VII. From Spaniard and Morisca, Albino (VII. De español y morisca, albino)

* Nearly 20,000 images of artworks the museum believes to be in the public domain are available to download on this site. Other images may be protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights. By using any of these images you agree to LACMA's Terms of Use.

New Acquisition: Three Casta Paintings by Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz

April 21, 2019

Casta (“caste”) painting is one of the most compelling forms of artistic expression from colonial Mexico. These three works belong to a set of castas by Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz that originally had sixteen scenes (over time many sets have been disassembled), and it is one of the finest of the genre…

VII. From Spaniard and Morisca, Albino (VII. De español y morisca, albino)

Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz (Mexico, 1713-1772)

Mexico, circa 1760

Paintings

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 39 7/16 × 47 7/16 in. (100.2 × 120.5 cm); framed: 41 5/16 × 49 5/8 × 1 1/2 in. (104.9 × 125.98 × 3.81 cm)

Gift of the 2011 Collectors Committee (M.2011.20.1)

Latin American Art

Not currently on public view

Provenance

Charles Samuel Hainworth (1873–1957), United Kingdom, early 20th century; by inheritance to his son Henry Charles Hainworth (1914–2005), Geneva, 1957; Derek Johns Ltd., London, 2010; LACMA, 2011.

Label

Eighteenth-century Mexico saw the invention of a unique pictorial genre known as castas (caste paintings).

...

Eighteenth-century Mexico saw the invention of a unique pictorial genre known as castas (caste paintings). Created as sets of multiple images, the works document the process of mestizaje (racial mixing) among Amerindians, Spaniards, and Africans. The story the paintings tell, reinforced by the inscriptions, is that the mixture of Spaniards and Indians gave back “pure” or white Spaniards, while the union of Spaniards and Indians with Africans led to racial degeneration. Paradoxically, the inclusion of local products presented the New World as a place of boundless natural wonder and emphasized the colonists’ pride in the diversity and prosperity of the land—a friction that permeates the genre.

The figures’ dress and occupations reinforce their social standing. For example, some works portray women of African descent wearing a distinctive overblouse fastened with gold or silver brooches and colorful ribbons ( M.2011.20.3). Sumptuary laws banned Black women and their children from wearing Spanish-style clothing. The fashion they developed in response, which recalls the tunics worn by Moorish women in southern Spain, was often singled out by travelers as highly ostentatious.

From exhibition Archive of the World, 2022 (for more information see the catalogue entry by Ilona Katzew in the accompanying publication, cat. no. 40, pp. 195–200)

More...

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.

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. “De español y torna atrás, tente en el aire by Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz,” Chiricú Journal 3, no. 2 (2019): 17–19.
Ilona Katzew, “New Acquisition: Three Casta Paintings by Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz,” Unframed, April 21, 2011, https://unframed.lacma.org/2011/04/21/new-acquisition-three-casta-paintings-by-juan-patricio-morlete-ruiz.

More...

Exhibition history

Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World Los Angeles, CA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, November 6, 2011 - January 29, 2012
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

Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World Los Angeles, CA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, November 6, 2011 - January 29, 2012
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

More...