Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz
View of the City and Harbor of Toulon (From the series Ports of France) (Vista de la villa y rada de Tolón [De la serie Puertos de Francia])1771

On view:

Geffen Galleries, floor 2

Oil painting, panoramic landscape from an elevated terrace crowded with elegantly dressed figures on foot and horseback, overlooking a vast plain with a city and distant mountains

Oil painting of a formal garden scene with figures in 18th-century dress gathered near a circular fountain pool. Two men in red coats and tricorn hats stand at right; a group including women and children in blue, white, and red garments cluster at center-left. A stone arcade with climbing vines frames a terrace with a set dining table at upper right; rolling hills and topiary in the background.

Oil painting of elegantly dressed figures in 18th-century clothing gathered on a stone terrace with balustraded steps; a small white dog accompanies a couple descending the stairs, while horses and additional figures appear at right against a landscaped garden background.

Artist or Maker: Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz
Mexico, 1713-1772
Title: View of the City and Harbor of Toulon (From the series Ports of France) (Vista de la villa y rada de Tolón [De la serie Puertos de Francia])
Date Made: 1771
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: Unframed: 40 × 60 7/8 in. (101.6 × 154.6 cm); framed: 43 3/4 × 63 3/8 × 3 in. (111.13 × 160.97 × 7.62 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund
Accession Number: M.2007.197.1
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 Harbor of Toulon.

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.2007.197.3, M.2007.197.4, M.2007.197.5, and M.2007.197.)

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. “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.
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.
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
Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790: Pinxit Mexici . April 24 - July 22, 2018
Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790: Pinxit Mexici . June 29 - October 15, 2017
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 Harbor of Toulon (From the series Ports of France) (Vista de la villa y rada de Tolón [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 Harbor of Toulon (From the series Ports of France) (Vista de la villa y rada de Tolón [De la serie Puertos de Francia])
Date Made: 1771
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: Unframed: 40 × 60 7/8 in. (101.6 × 154.6 cm); framed: 43 3/4 × 63 3/8 × 3 in. (111.13 × 160.97 × 7.62 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund
Accession Number: M.2007.197.1
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 Harbor of Toulon.

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.2007.197.3, M.2007.197.4, M.2007.197.5, and M.2007.197.)

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. “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.
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.
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
Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790: Pinxit Mexici . April 24 - July 22, 2018
Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790: Pinxit Mexici . June 29 - October 15, 2017
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