Mulatto woman selling fruit
Landaluze, Víctor Patricio
Bilbao, 1830 - Guanabacoa, La Habana, 1889
Mulatto woman selling fruit, n/d
Signed in the lower right corner: 'LANDALUZE'
Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
Watercolours and ink on paper.
27 x 21 cm
CTB.1996.123
Artwork history
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Fernando Durán Art Auctions, Auction 107, lot 40 (pair of drawings), Madrid, November 21st, 1996.
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Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection.
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– Colonial Memory in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collections. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid [Exhib. Cat.], Ed. Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2024. Cat. 36, p. 99.
Expert report
Notable among the testimonies from Cuba in the second half of the 18oos are the pictures of local customs by Víctor Patricio Landaluze, a painter and illustrator originally from Bilbao who was active in that country between the 1850s and 1889. Opposed to Cuban independence, Landaluze depicted idealised scenes of landowners, Guajiros (Cuban peasants) and enslaved people, almost invariably adopting a tendentiously satirical approach to the subordinate populations (1).
The watercolours Fruit Seller and Hawker are among his most realistic works. Both attest to the significant presence in Cuba of people of African descent, brought by slavers, and also of underpaid Asían labourers when the slave trade began to decline under international pressure.
Juan Ángel López-Manzanares
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(1) See Marta Garsd’s commentary on the painter in Thenenbaum 1996, and the website of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Cuba