Víctor Patricio Landaluze Uriarte

A humorous illustrator and genre painter, Spanish by birth with work of authentically Cuban theme, who captured the types and popular scenes of colonial society in the second half of the nineteenth century.

He was born in Bilbao on March 6, 1830. He arrived in Cuba before May 1850 with solid academic training and knowledge of lithographic art. He settled in the city of Cárdenas, where he coincided with the landing and withdrawal of General Narciso López and the subsequent unfolding of that annexationist attempt, in whose actions the lancer Feliciano Carrasco and the second officer don Manuel de Enna died.

These military events seem to have influenced Landaluze to decide his entry into the Volunteer Corps and the political stance he would assume as an integralist; and they will also be the subject of the first works he creates in Cuba, in 1851, carried out as engravings in the workshops of the Military Lithographic and Louis Marquier.

Still recently arrived, he linked himself to the genre of customs—which had gained momentum within insular literature—and illustrated the work Los cubanos pintados por sí mismos (1852), published in Havana by the Spanish Blas San Millán. The articles gathered in the volume are accompanied by woodcuts, created by José Robles based on drawings by Landaluze and lithographs by the artist himself. This work was harshly criticized by Idelfonso Estrada y Zenea from the pages of the weekly El Almendares, which he directed (and in which Landaluze worked as an illustrator and where he associated with the poet Juan Clemente Zenea). Later criticism even suggested that Landaluze created the illustrations from Spain—guided by the descriptions of the texts chosen for the book—due to the lack of Cuban authenticity in the types represented, the evident omission of the Black sector of Creole society, and the ignorance evident in a work that constitutes only his first approach to the country.

Already established in Havana, he ventured into the literary field as a playwright. However, his most sustained work alongside painting will be caricature, which he develops starting in 1857, when he joins as a contributor to the weekly La Charanga (1857-1858), directed by Juan Martínez Villergas—with whom he maintained a fruitful friendship—and where in addition to humorous drawing, he creates artistic and current affairs critiques.

At this time, the cigar factory Llaguno y Cía. launches the series Vida y muerte de la mulata, illustrated by "La Charanga de Villergas". Among the collaborators, Landaluce appears, caricatured in the framing of the chromolithographs, playing the bass drum, in allusion to the pseudonym with which he signed his articles. From his trip to Mexico with Villergas in 1858, several sketches are preserved in the collection of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Cuba)—donated by his widow—that reveal Landaluze's eager eye, interested in approaching the customs and types of the country he visits. Years later, on journeys through the United States, England, France, and his native Spain, he would also document his passage—as a curious traveler—through those lands.

Upon his return to Havana, he collaborated prolifically in various magazines of a humorous nature. He founded his own newspaper, Don Junípero (1862-1867), from which, among general themes, he joined, with the series of caricatures Lecturas de los Talleres (1866), the campaign against the reformists who were fighting to introduce reading in tobacco workshops in Cuba. From the pages of El Moro Muza (1859-1877), once again alongside Villergas, his humorous drawings and legends of political nature directed his incisive satire, starting in 1868, against the ranks of the independentists. But it will be in the magazine Juan Palomo (1869-1874) where Landaluze's most biting caricatures appear against the leaders of the insurrection—presented as drunks (Aguilera), thieves (Aldama), and inept at wielding weapons—and against the activities of Cuban patriots. The tone of the critiques will decline from 1871 onwards, marking a shift in his attitude. This change is attributed to the impact that may have been caused on the artist by the executions of the Medical students and the poet Juan Clemente Zenea, with whom he maintained a friendly relationship. His work then focuses, from the "Almanaque Cómico Político," published in Juan Palomo, on satirizing the racial mixing in Cuba and, from 1873, he collaborates with the weekly La Sombra (1873-1874), within a clearly customs-based line.

In 1872, he was appointed colonel of the Volunteer Corps and alderman of the Municipality of Guanabacoa. He moved to that town, where, along with military life, he dedicated himself to perfecting his work on popular types. He returns to the subject with a qualitative knowledge of the country and its people that far surpassed the vision he could have contributed in 1852. The album Tipos y Costumbres de la Isla de Cuba (1881), published by Miguel de Villas, with a prologue by Antonio Bachiller y Morales, is a monumental work within Landaluze's printed oeuvre: he created 20 illustrative drawings, printed in phototype by Alfredo Pereira Taveira (Portugal, 1844-Havana, 1913), and a chromolithograph. A work qualified as superficial and picturesque, but recognized as the one that best and most tenderly reflected the popular life of the nineteenth century in Cuba.

Amiable, yet satirical, his pictorial work develops in small-format scenes, which, except for casual forays into other genres, are customs-based prints. His bright and flat colors achieve in painting qualities similar to those of his watercolors, and capture with great realism the light of the country. For the domestic slave, he chooses welcoming interiors refreshed by the shade of the colonial house. For free Blacks and mulattos, the city streets offer freedom of movement and expressivity to elegant and graceful figures, always cheerful, who seem unaware of the social miseries that have driven Creoles to struggle for their independence. The vision of slavery he offers is festive in Día de Reyes en La Habana and achieves some realism in the whip wielded by El Mayoral or in the desperate expression of El Cimarrón (ca.1874).

He did not fail to reflect the Spanish sentinel, the peninsular merchant, or the gentleman with his lady. His peasants appear at rural festivities dressed in impeccable white shirts and yarey hats, which has caused, in not a few texts, the confusion that Landaluze is the creator of the character of Liborio (a personification of the Cuban people dressed in the same attire, which would be born from the pen of another humorist, Ricardo de la Torriente, during the Republic).

His return to caricature, between 1879 and 1884, in Villergas's new satirical magazine, Don Circunstancias, would no longer have the aggressiveness of old. That last year he retired from his prolonged activity in the press, already plagued by the tuberculosis that consumed his health. He was, by then, married to a Cuban woman, Rita María Planas y Arredondo, widow of Granados, a lady praised for her grace and with a family formed from her first marriage, whose daughter and grandchildren would serve the artist as models for some paintings.

Víctor Patricio Landaluze died in Guanabacoa on June 7, 1889; he held several high decorations from the Spanish government. His work contains the paradox of the foreigner who never identified with the social ideals of the Island that welcomed him, but who understood the society of his time better than any other artist. The iconography he established through his artistic work is essential reference documentation on the customs and types of Creole and colonial Cuba of the second half of the nineteenth century.

He died in Guanabacoa on June 7, 1889, already plagued by the tuberculosis that consumed his health. He was, by then, married to a Cuban woman, Rita María Planas y Arredondo, widow of Granados, a lady praised for her grace and with a family formed from her first marriage, whose daughter and grandchildren would serve the artist as models for some paintings. He held several high decorations from the Spanish government.

His work contains the paradox of the foreigner who never identified with the social ideals of the Island that welcomed him, but who understood the society of his time better than any other artist. The iconography he established through his artistic work is essential reference documentation on the customs and types of Creole and colonial Cuba of the second half of the nineteenth century.