Colonial Caribbean (probably Puerto Rico) c. 1800
A Lady Reading, in European Dress
Oil on canvas14 ¾ x 11⅛ inches (37.5 x 28.3 cm); framed size 20 x 16½ inches
The present work contains several clues to its origin within it. Once one bores in on the elements of the European-style portrait, its origin from a particular region of the New World becomes clear. The lady is dressed in an outfit for daytime, characteristic of the French-type costumes worn 1770-1775: what was called a ‘mop cap,’ powdered wig, and day dress. The furniture, of a simpler style than French Rococo, is English. Both French clothing and English furniture pattern books were influential in the Hispanic world of the eighteenth century.
In Hispanic art, one is likely to find multiple European styles combined in a painting (such a combination would be anathema to a French or an English painter!), where the European canons and conventions of style in art tended to become more blurred. It is interesting to note comparisons of our painting with those of the Puerto Rican late-Rococo painter José Campeche--who in turn was highly influenced by the Spanish painter Luis Paret y Alcazar, exiled to Puerto Rico 1775-1778.
The late 18th Century portraits of women that José Campeche painted in Puerto Rico were replete with elaborate hats and gowns (robes de parade à la Luis Paret; cf. Campeche’s portraits of the Wife of Governor Dufresne, c. 1782 and Doña María Catalina de Urrutia, c. 1788). This work, however, is by a different hand than Campeche, and shares more of the neoclassical tendencies of Campeche’s very late work.
