Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz
View of the City and Port of Bayonne (From the series Ports of France) (Vista de la villa y puerto de Bayona [De la serie Puertos de Francia])1771

On view:

Geffen Galleries, floor 2

Oil painting, panoramic harbor view of a French port town with sailing ships on a wide river, hillside figures in the foreground, and a cloud-filled sky above

Oil painting, panoramic harbor view with a town and hills in the distance, a bridge and tall-masted sailing ships on the water. Foreground figures in 18th-century dress gather near a wooden fence on a hillside, with goats nearby; workers and laundry visible on rocks below. A crowned cartouche appears in the lower right corner.

Artist or Maker: Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz
Mexico, 1713-1772
Title: View of the City and Port of Bayonne (From the series Ports of France) (Vista de la villa y puerto de Bayona [De la serie Puertos de Francia])
Date Made: 1771
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 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)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund
Accession Number: M.2007.197.5
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Latin American Art
Curatorial Notes: Few works illustrate Mexican artists’ engagement with recent developments in European art better than Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz’s imposing series of vedute (views). He painted two sets after Claude-Joseph Vernet’s monumental Ports of France (1754–65), which were commissioned for Louis XV (r. 1715–74) to celebrate France’s maritime prowess. These works became widely known through prints by Charles-Nicolas Cochin II (1715–1790) and Jacques-Philippe Le Bas (1707–1783) completed in 1767. Remarkably, Morlete Ruiz had access to the prints barely two years later, and from 1769 to 1772, he painted more than twenty canvases after them, including View of the City and Port of Bayonne.

Quoting from, modifying, and elaborating on these scenes not only proved his virtuosity but also allowed him to position himself in relation to a transatlantic community of artists with shared intellectual interests. The inscription on one painting from the series, View of the Old Port of Toulon (M.2007.197.2), reads “copied in Mexico by Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz the year 1771,” signaling his claim of authorship. The addition of the coat of arms of Charles III (r. 1759–88) in this set suggests that it may have been planned as a royal gift to take back to Spain. (For other paintings from the set in LACMA’s collection, see M.2007.197.1, M.2007.197.3, M.2007.197.4, and M.2007.197.6.)

Ilona Katzew

2024
Provenance: 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.
Selected 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. 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.
Joseph Franek, Ilona Katzew, “A Collaborative Venture: The Conservation of Morlete’s Ports of France,” Unframed, April 25, 2013, https://unframed.lacma.org/2013/04/25/a-collaborative-venture-the-conservation-of-morletes-ports-of-france.
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.
Selected Exhibition History: Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790: Pinxit Mexici . Sunday, November 19, 2017 - Sunday, March 18, 2018
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. June 12, 2022 - October 30, 2022
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. October 20, 2023 - January 28, 2024
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. June 22, 2024 - September 08, 2024

Related Exhibitions

Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz
View of the City and Port of Bayonne (From the series Ports of France) (Vista de la villa y puerto de Bayona [De la serie Puertos de Francia])1771

On view:

Geffen Galleries, floor 2

Artist or Maker: Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz
Mexico, 1713-1772
Title: View of the City and Port of Bayonne (From the series Ports of France) (Vista de la villa y puerto de Bayona [De la serie Puertos de Francia])
Date Made: 1771
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 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)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund
Accession Number: M.2007.197.5
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Latin American Art
Curatorial Notes: Few works illustrate Mexican artists’ engagement with recent developments in European art better than Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz’s imposing series of vedute (views). He painted two sets after Claude-Joseph Vernet’s monumental Ports of France (1754–65), which were commissioned for Louis XV (r. 1715–74) to celebrate France’s maritime prowess. These works became widely known through prints by Charles-Nicolas Cochin II (1715–1790) and Jacques-Philippe Le Bas (1707–1783) completed in 1767. Remarkably, Morlete Ruiz had access to the prints barely two years later, and from 1769 to 1772, he painted more than twenty canvases after them, including View of the City and Port of Bayonne.

Quoting from, modifying, and elaborating on these scenes not only proved his virtuosity but also allowed him to position himself in relation to a transatlantic community of artists with shared intellectual interests. The inscription on one painting from the series, View of the Old Port of Toulon (M.2007.197.2), reads “copied in Mexico by Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz the year 1771,” signaling his claim of authorship. The addition of the coat of arms of Charles III (r. 1759–88) in this set suggests that it may have been planned as a royal gift to take back to Spain. (For other paintings from the set in LACMA’s collection, see M.2007.197.1, M.2007.197.3, M.2007.197.4, and M.2007.197.6.)

Ilona Katzew

2024
Provenance: 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.
Selected 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. 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.
Joseph Franek, Ilona Katzew, “A Collaborative Venture: The Conservation of Morlete’s Ports of France,” Unframed, April 25, 2013, https://unframed.lacma.org/2013/04/25/a-collaborative-venture-the-conservation-of-morletes-ports-of-france.
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.
Selected Exhibition History: Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790: Pinxit Mexici . Sunday, November 19, 2017 - Sunday, March 18, 2018
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. June 12, 2022 - October 30, 2022
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. October 20, 2023 - January 28, 2024
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. June 22, 2024 - September 08, 2024