Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz
View of the Old Port of Toulon (From the series Ports of France) (Vista del puerto viejo de Tolón [De la serie Puertos de Francia])1771

Not on view

Oil painting of a busy harbor scene with tall-masted ships, crowded dockside figures, cattle, and a stormy sky; Spanish inscription along the lower edge

Oil painting of a busy harbor scene with laborers rolling barrels, herding cattle, and loading cargo onto boats; a dog and white ox appear in the foreground; Spanish inscription along the bottom edge reads 'Tolon, visto del lado de los Almacens de Viveres, fa...'

Artist or Maker: Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz
Mexico, 1713-1772
Title: View of the Old Port of Toulon (From the series Ports of France) (Vista del puerto viejo de Tolón [De la serie Puertos de Francia])
Date Made: 1771
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: Unframed: 39 11/16 × 60 7/8 in. (100.8 × 154.6 cm); framed: 43 5/8 × 64 5/8 × 3 in. (110.81 × 164.15 × 7.3 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund
Accession Number: M.2007.197.2
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Latin American Art
Curatorial Notes: 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 https://collections.lacma.org/node/215190" >M.2007.197.1, https://collections.lacma.org/node/215182" >M.2007.197.3, https://collections.lacma.org/node/215213" >M.2007.197.4, https://collections.lacma.org/node/215179" >M.2007.197.5, and https://collections.lacma.org/node/215183" >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. 55, pp. 238–45)
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 . June 29 - October 15, 2017
Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790: Pinxit Mexici . June 29 - October 15, 2017
Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790: Pinxit Mexici . April 24 - July 22, 2018
Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790: Pinxit Mexici . April 24 - July 22, 2018
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. June 22, 2024 - September 08, 2024
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. June 22, 2024 - September 08, 2024

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