Miguel Cabrera
6. From Spaniard and Morisca, Albino Girl (6. De español y morisca, albina)1763

On view:

Geffen Galleries, Spanish America at the Center of the World

Oil painting of a man, woman, and pale-skinned child grouped together, the adults in elaborate period dress, with a flintlock pistol on the ground and a Spanish inscription above

Detail of an oil painting showing a figure's hand and lower body in 18th-century dress: green overskirt, red floral underskirt, white lace-trimmed petticoat, and a bright blue heeled shoe with buckle, set against floral-patterned fabric with red carnations.

Oil painting detail depicting a white textile with painted floral chinoiserie pattern in red, blue, and green; a peacock among flowering vines at left; an ornate vase with bouquet on a pedestal at right.

Oil painting of a man and woman with a young child between them. The man, in a yellow doublet with red velvet sleeves and white ruff, leans in from the left. The woman at right wears a striped shawl, white blouse with lace cuffs, and diamond earrings. The fair-haired child, dressed in white with a black choker, faces outward. Smooth, detailed brushwork against a dark gray background.

Oil painting still life of a flintlock musket with silver-inlaid stock lying on a wooden surface, alongside a rolled cloth, loose matches, and draped blue and red fabric in the background.

Detail of a painted panel with dark brown background, showing light-colored lettering reading "6. De Español, y Morisca; Albina" above a decorative floral border in green, red, and white.

Artist or Maker: Miguel Cabrera
Mexico, circa 1710-1768
Title: 6. From Spaniard and Morisca, Albino Girl (6. De español y morisca, albina)
Date Made: 1763
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: Canvas: 51 5/8 × 41 3/8 in. (131.1 × 105.1 cm); mount: 54 3/4 × 44 1/4 × 2 3/8 in. (139.1 × 112.4 × 6 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Kelvin Davis in honor of the museum's 50th anniversary and partial gift of Christina Jones Janssen in honor of the Gregory and Harriet Jones Family
Accession Number: M.2014.223
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Latin American Art
Curatorial Notes: This tender family scene belongs to a set of casta paintings, a pictorial genre invented in Mexico in the eighteenth century. It depicts a morisca woman of Spanish and African ancestry, a Spanish soldier, and their albino daughter. The canvas is still attached to the Asian-inspired scroll case used to ship it from Mexico to Spain. The mother wears an Indian-cotton skirt and a Mexican rebozo (shawl) over a European-style blouse. The father sports a cuera (leather coat) worn by soldiers stationed in Mexico’s northern frontier. A silver-inlay gun lies beside him, under a knife secreted in his trousers. The artist Miguel Cabrera, who was racially mixed despite passing as Spanish in official documentation, employed open brushwork for the faces of the man and child but blended the morisca woman’s skin to a high finish—a stylistic choice that may hold deeper meaning in light of the artist’s own mixed socioracial background.

Casta paintings are complex works that document the process of racial mixing among Amerindians, Spaniards, and Africans. Typically created as sets of sixteen paintings, each scene depicts a man and a woman of a different race with one or two of their children. The inscriptions rank the family groups by race and class and often include zoological and other derogatory descriptive terms. Paradoxically, the inclusion of local products in these paintings presented Spanish America 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. Here, for example, the soldier-father is shown smoking (note the second cigarette behind his ear), with a package of cigarettes near at hand. Tobacco was a staple of the New World that yielded great revenue to the Spanish crown.

Ilona Katzew

2024
Provenance: Unknown collection, Spain, 1920s; David Gray, Montecito, California, 1920s; gifted to James R. H. Wagner, Montecito; by inheritance to his daughter Harriet Wagner and his son-in-law Gregory Jones (“La Casita Adobe”), Sonoma, California, 1940s; by descent to their son Gregory Jones Jr., Santa Rosa, California, 1999; by inheritance to his daughter Cristina Jones Janssen, Lafayette, California, 1998–99; Robert Simon Fine Art, New York, 2014; LACMA, 2014.
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 “White or Black? Albinism and Spotted Blacks in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World.” In Envisioning Others: Race, Color, and the Visual in Iberia and Latin America, edited by Pamela Patton. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2016, pp. 142–86.
Fronek, Joseph. “Observations on Miguel Cabrera after the Conservation of His Casta Paintings.” Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture 1, no. 2 (2019): 122–130.
Ilona Katzew, “Why an Albino? Some Notes On Our New Casta Painting by Miguel Cabrera,” Unframed, April 22, 2015, https://unframed.lacma.org/2015/04/22/why-albino-some-notes-our-new-casta-painting-miguel-cabrera.
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 . Sunday, November 19, 2017 - Sunday, March 18, 2018
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 . April 24 - July 22, 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. 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. October 20, 2023 - January 28, 2024
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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