Vicente Escobar Flores

Cuban painter who cultivated, above all, the portrait genre and enjoyed a solid reputation in his time.

He was born in Havana, son of Antonio Escobar and Justa María de Flores, as recorded in Act No. 446, folio 117 of Book 16 of Baptism of Pardos and Morenos. He belonged to a family of Officers of the Regiment of Pardos and Morenos, which was a well-to-do Black family, belonging to the brotherhoods of free pardos and morenos. Although he was registered as Black at birth, it is asserted that he died as white after availing himself of the Royal Decree of Grace to Purchase (Aranjuez, February 10, 1795).

He began as a self-taught artist, but, in the mid-1780s, he traveled to Spain, where he studied at the Academy of San Fernando in Madrid and came into contact with the painting of Goya, of whom he appears to have been a fervent admirer.

Escobar was not only the first Cuban painter to make this type of study trip, but he also appears to have been a pioneer in having an independent workshop that, by 1820, was located on Compostela Street No. 62, in Havana. In this setting, he had as disciples Juan del Río and the poet and painter Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés (Plácido).

His work developed between two centuries; therefore, one can appreciate characteristics of eighteenth-century painting, particularly in religious themes, while the portraits are more lighthearted, especially in the poses and attitudes of the bourgeois class he represents. To the brush of Escobar and other contemporary painters such as Eliab Metcalf and Juan del Río, we owe an extensive gallery of figures belonging to the Havana aristocracy of the early nineteenth century.

Within the repertoire of his subjects, we find several Captains General passing through the Island (from the Marquis of la Torre to Espeleta), as well as ladies from the Bermúdez, Allo and other families of undisclosed identity, but of evident lineage. The collection of portraits of the governors of the Island remained in the artist's possession until it was acquired by Captain General Francisco Dionisio Vives (admirer and benefactor of Escobar), to decorate the hall of the building of the Captain General's office. At the end of colonial rule (1898), these pieces were transferred to the Archive of the Indies, in Seville.

Within his production, female figures enjoy a special place, whom he represented based on a frequent scheme: the woman seated on a simple armchair and moderately inclined to suggest depth. The backgrounds are generally neutral, although he may include in them some window as a support for the sensation of spatiality of the painting. The painter paid attention to elegant European-style clothing, jewels and other accessories symbolic of the social class or activities of the person portrayed, but the emphasis of the composition falls on the faces, in which he displayed his best talents.

In contrast with a strong epochal tendency toward idealization, Escobar was discreet and interested in achieving a physical likeness quite close to the respective models. He possessed an extraordinary visual memory; as is believed, it was enough for him to see someone only once to later paint them with surprising accuracy. It is asserted that with this method he painted the presbyter Francisco Suazo in 1816. Aware of how extraordinary his procedure was, on several occasions he stamped, next to his signature, the rubric: he painted it from memory.

In general terms, his style moves between academicism of descriptive intention and a certain primitivism, perceptible in his technical limitations for the representation of proportions, volumes and hands, as well as in the naive solutions to which he resorted to achieve effects of depth. Nevertheless, this artist enjoyed great acceptance and social demand in his time. In the novel Cecilia Valdés, Cirilo Villaverde mentions him several times, which corroborates his success.

The collection of the National Museum of Fine Arts (Cuba) preserves several of his canvases of appreciable craftsmanship, among them, The Benefactress (1819), Aquilina Bermúdez (ca. 1920) and the Portrait of Justa de Allo and Bermúdez (undated). The latter stands out for the freshness, beauty and naturalness of the young woman's face, as much as for the transparency and imaginable softness of her dress. Once again the artist lingers, especially on the facial features: the tender gaze, the mouth drawn with careful brushstrokes and the gathered hair that eventually adorns the face, endow the portrait with admirable grace and vitality.

Despite the prestige he possessed in life, Escobar did not figure as a master of the then newly founded School of Painting and Sculpture of San Alejandro (1818). Much more attached to Spanish tradition, he did not associate with Juan Bautista Vermay and Giuseppe Perovani, introducers of French fashions in the country.

On May 15, 1827, Escobar was appointed Painter to the Chamber of the Spanish monarch Ferdinand VII. As for the date of such appointment, diverse opinions have been sustained: Olga López Núñez and Ursulina Cruz Díaz agree on the year 1827, while Guillermo Sánchez places this event in 1829 and attributes to the efforts of Dionisio Vives before Queen María Cristina the granting of such distinction to the Cuban painter.

A few years after receiving this honor, Vicente Escobar y Flores died in the city that saw him born, a victim of a cholera epidemic. His death is recorded in Act 219, folio 32 of Book 18 of Deaths of Spaniards, in the Parish of the Holy Spirit. At present, his numerous works call for systematic studies that highlight the significance of this artist in the Cuban and Latin American cultural horizon that was common to him.