SESSION: The Internationalisation of Spanish and Latin American Art in the Long Nineteenth Century

Spain’s modern painters are but mediocrities’ declared Richard Ford, the influential British Hispanist, in 1845. At the 1855 Universal Exhibition in Paris, critics proclaimed the death of Spanish art in similar terms: it lacked the ‘soul of Zurbarán and Velázquez’. These assertions, which relegate Spanish art to the past, exemplify what an anthropologist might term the ‘denial of coevalness’. Nineteenth-century Latin American art was, in turn, regarded by European critics as derivative of Iberian traditions. Such attitudes have had lasting consequences.

While European and North American traveller-artists in Iberia and Latin America have received considerable attention, artists from these regions have often been marginalised, creating significant gaps in our understanding of global nineteenth-century art. Many Iberian and Latin American artists enjoyed productive international careers, exhibiting in Paris, London, and other European cities, as well as in the United States.

This panel invites contributions that explore the internationalisation of Iberian and Latin American artists during the nineteenth century. To what extent did they assimilate or resist aesthetics, styles, and ways of seeing that were familiar to their northern European counterparts? To what extent did they engage with or disavow the exoticising gaze – to which their work was often subjected – through style and particular subject matter, such as modern infrastructure and industry? What tactics and strategies did they deploy to present and market their work abroad? How did international critics respond to their work, and how do nineteenth-century attitudes to their work resurface in art writing today?

Session Convenors:

Claudia Hopkins, University of Edinburgh

Daniel Sobrino Ralston, The National Gallery

Session Speakers:

Daniel Sobrino Ralston, National Gallery

Paris, Madrid, Mexico City: Raimundo de Madrazo and José María Velasco at the 1878 Exposition Universelle

At the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris, the fine arts of Spain were represented by a varied and impressive selection of works. Among them were Goya’s Black Paintings, some thirty works by the universally acclaimed but recently deceased artist Mariano Fortuny, and a bevvy of canvases, sculptures, and drawings by living artists, including Raimundo de Madrazo, who had helped to organise the display. For many critics, Madrazo’s vivid, merry genre scenes and accomplished portraits carried off the laurels. He was proclaimed, above other Spanish artists, ‘the more direct inheritor of the national impulse, the more perfectly endued with the mantle of Ribera and Goya’. Also hanging in the Spanish section was the Mexican painter José María Velasco’s magisterial view of Mexico City from the hill of Santa Isabel. In this now-famous painting, Velasco unfurled the story of his nation across a large canvas with a keen historical and scientific eye. By contrast to Madrazo, Velasco attracted little notice. This previously unheralded juxtaposition of paintings by two of the leading nineteenth-century artists of Spain and Mexico affords me an opportunity to reflect on how both Velasco and Madrazo – and Spanish and Mexican artists in general – navigated the competing aesthetic and identitarian demands of international exhibitions. With the differing reception of their paintings in mind, I argue that European art criticism, which positioned Madrazo in relation to a well-known national school, rendered Velasco perpetually belated, despite both artists’ sophisticated, if disparate, engagement with modernity.

Lauren Mahany, University of Edinburgh

Antonio Fabrés in Mexico: The San Carlos Academy

The Catalan Antonio Fabrés y Costa (Barcelona, 1854-Rome, 1938), primarily known as a costumbrismo and Orientalist painter, pursued an international career with residencies in Barcelona, Rome, Paris, and Mexico City. This paper examines Fabrés’ period as a teacher at the San Carlos Academy in Mexico (1902-1907), situating his work within early twentieth-century debates on art, teaching, and national identity in a transnational framework of Spain and Mexico.

The San Carlos Academy’s decision to recruit Fabrés reflected both his success in Paris in 1900 and the Academy’s enduring alignment with European artistic traditions after Mexico’s independence. Fabrés’ colleagues at the Academy included notable Mexican artists, such as José María Velasco, and he taught many Mexican students, including future prominent figures, such as José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and Saturnino Herrán. However, Fabrés’ time in Mexico was marked by both acclaim and tension. His solo exhibitions were well received; his prop-filled studio was admired, earning him the sobriquet “Andalusian-Mexican artist”; and President Porfirio Díaz commissioned him to curate an exotic armoury hall. Yet, Fabrés faced increasing challenges as he distanced himself from costumbrismo and ‘commercial’ art. To conclude, I examine his 1904 speech ‘Verdades’ (Truths), a key source for understanding the shift in Fabrés’ thinking, which ultimately clashed with the San Carlos Academy’s Eurocentred norms and supported modern Mexican iconographies. Fabrés’ Mexican years proved transformative for his career and contributed to debates on the future of Mexican art and identity.

Pablo Sánchez Izquierdo, Universitat de València

From Rome to London: José Benlliure’s International Trajectory

José Benlliure Gil (Cañamelar,1855–València,1937) was one of the most prominent Valencian painters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His career was marked by national and international success, including his appointment as Director of the Spanish Academy in Rome in 1901. While his achievements in Italy and Germany have received scholarly attention, his presence in the British art market remains largely unexplored. This paper asks how Benlliure’s works circulated and were received in Britain. It draws on archival sources, exhibition catalogues, and press reviews from London and regional newspapers to reconstruct the networks that facilitated his entry into this market, notably through the dealer Martin Colnaghi.

The analysis focuses on genre paintings preserved in British institutions, La Posada (c. 1890, Victoria & Albert Museum) and El Fumador (c.1890, Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum), and introduces new references to Benlliure’s exhibitions in London. It also considers works that remain in Colnaghi’s collection, the gallery that played a key role in Benlliure’s entry into the British market, to argue that his presence was more significant than previously acknowledged, shaping his international reputation and contributing to the broader circulation of Spanish art. By examining this aspect of Benlliure’s career, this paper aims to contribute to discussions on the internationalisation of Spanish art in the long nineteenth century and offers a new perspective on the dynamics of artistic exchange between Spain and Britain.

Cristina Aldrich, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University, Dallas

Reframing al-Andalus: Spanish Photography, Jean Laurent and the Transnational Image

In nineteenth-century Spain, photography emerged as both a commercial enterprise and a tool for shaping the nation’s visual identity. This paper examines the studios of Emilio Beauchy in Seville and Rafael Señán y González in Granada, whose photographs of the Alhambra, Córdoba’s Great Mosque, and other monuments translated al-Andalus into reproducible images of national heritage. Working within the expanding circuits of domestic tourism, the souvenir trade, and the illustrated press, both photographers adapted visual conventions established by foreign predecessors such as Jean Laurent, whose pioneering Madrid studio had already linked photography to Spain’s self-representation abroad. Beauchy and Señán’s carefully composed architectural views and staged “Moorish” studio portraits demonstrate how the Islamic past was aestheticized, commercialized, and repackaged for middle-class consumption. Yet their work also reveals a distinctively Spanish negotiation of Andalucismo—a cultural movement that celebrated Andalusian traditions and Islamic architectural legacies as emblems of national pride and regional identity. Drawing on recent art-historical studies of Orientalism and heritage politics, this paper situates these photographers within broader nineteenth-century debates about authenticity, modernity, and Spain’s place within Europe. It argues that their images not only documented monuments but actively mediated the idea of al-Andalus as a living, visual language through which the Spanish nation imagined its own continuity with a complex, plural past.