De Cambujo, y Mulata, Albarazado

De Cambujo, y Mulata, Albarazado

circa 1775
Artist
Francisco Clapera, Spanish, 1746-1810
Born: Spain
Work Locations: Mexico
Country
Mexico
Object
painting, Casta
Accession Number
2011.428.11
Credit Line
Gift of the Collection of Frederick and Jan Mayer

Francisco Clapera, De Cambujo, y Mulata, Albarazado, about 1775. Oil paint on canvas; 20⅛ × 15⅝ in. Gift of the Collection of Frederick and Jan Mayer, 2011.428.11.

Dimensions
image height: 20.125 in, 51.1175 cm; image width: 15.625 in, 39.6875 cm; frame height: 23 3/16 in, 58.8963 cm; frame width: 18 3/4 in, 47.625 cm; frame depth: 1 1/2 in, 3.81 cm
Inscription
Title with number eleven above it at B center.
Department
Mayer Center, Latin American Art
Collection
Latin American Art

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, a new and unique genre of painting developed in Mexico.  Designed to depict and classify the miscegenation occurring between the three main racial groups (Spanish, African, and Indigenous), these sets of paintings (usually fourteen to sixteen) contain a wealth of information on the daily life, diet, occupations, clothing, habits, utilitarian objects, and recreations of the era.  Often commissioned for export to Spain, casta sets advertised the monetary wealth and natural abundance, in both products and people, of the American territories. The emphasis on ostentation and public display of wealth and abundance in castas became a conscious construct of Mexican self-image and can be associated with the growing nationalism of the late colonial period in Mexico.
     At the same time, the new genre of casta painting also reflects the desire to reinforce the stratification of social classes, a European system that was fast breaking down in the Americas as a result of various factors, including racial mixing, access to wealth (especially among miners and merchants), and social mobility.  The paintings increasingly attempted to reinforce upper-class conceptions of social stratification by privileging family groups that included a Spanish male—showing them early in the series (usually in numbers one to six) and furnishing them with details that suggested a more affluent lifestyle than that of other racial mixtures.
     Like most castas, Clapera’s series of sixteen (2011.428.1-.16), of which this painting is a part, portrays families in domestic settings engaged in private activities, thus providing a rare glimpse into the daily life of eighteenth-century Mexico.  Others show occupations and serve as a document to life in the colonial era.  The clothes, activities, and utensils reveal the hybridity of Mexican culture of the eighteenth century in their mix of European, Asian, and Mexican material culture.  
     Not much is known about Francisco Clapera other than that he was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1746 and trained in painting at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid where he graduated in 1768.  While the exact date of Clapera’s arrival in Mexico, via Peru, is unknown, by 1790 he was teaching painting at the Royal Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City.  Two of the sixteen paintings in this casta series are signed by the artist.
    This set of casta paintings is one of only a handful of complete sets still intact in the world and it is the only one in the United States.  
-- Donna Pierce, 2015

Known Provenance
Gifted 29 December 2011 by the Collection of Frederick and Jan Mayer to the Denver Art Museum. Provenance research is on-going at the Denver Art Museum. Please e-mail provenance@denverartmuseum.org, if you have questions, or if you have additional information to share with us.
Exhibition History
  • Denver Art Museum, Spanish Colonial galleries since 1996.
  • “ReVision: Art in the Americas” — Denver Art Museum, 10/24/2021 – 7/17/2022
  • ReVision: Art in the Americas, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN, 7/1/23 - 9/17/23