Lot 13: Jose Agustin Arrieta (Mexican 1803-1874)

a. El mandadero
oil on canvas
38 1/8 x 30 3/8 in. (97 x 77 cm.)
Painted circa 1865.
b. La sirvienta
oil on canvas
38 1/8 x 30 3/8 in. (97 x 77 cm.)
Painted circa 1865.
Two in one lot. (2)

Mexico City, Museo Nacional de Arte, Homenaje Nacional: José Agustín Arrieta (1803-1874) su tiempo, vida y obra, 1994, p. 25, n. 4; p. 224, n. 143 (illustrated in color).

Francisco González, Galerías La Granja, Mexico City.
By descent to the present owner.

Arrieta was one of the first students at the Escuela de Dibujo de la Real Casa de la Academia y Junta de Caridad para la Buena Educación de la Juventud, founded in Puebla, Mexico in 1815 by order of the King of Spain. This drawing school eventually became Puebla's Academy of Fine Arts.

He developed as a painter of portraits, costumbrismo (paintings depicting local life and costumes), and still-lifes. He became the most representative artist of the Puebla school in the 19th century and enjoyed a large clientele. He was both a product of his local social milieu and transcended it through the sophistication of his art. His paintings were influenced by the traditions of European art exemplified by artists as varied as Velázquez, Salvator Rosa, and Philip Peter Roos (known as Rosa da Tivoli) in his portraits of common people; Spanish bodegones and Dutch and Flemish paintings of sumptuary tables.

Arrieta's renown went beyond Puebla. There is no evidence that he actually traveled to the capital, Mexico City, but his works were exhibited there at the Academy of San Carlos in 1850, 1865, 1871, 1872, 1873, and 1877, a testament to his recognition by his artistic peers and the general public. His work is today prominently exhibited in the collections at the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico City and the Museo Bello and Galermas Bello in Puebla.

The two present works exemplify both his careful observation of local people and costumes, and the bounty of his still-lifes.

La Sirvienta holds a serving tray with fruit, including chirimoya, guava, apples, and perhaps a lemon and lime. The girl's gentle, direct facial expression is both pensive and engaging, but unsentimental. She is dressed in the modest daily clothing worn by Mexican working people of the time, her ample figure is covered by a simple "blusa" with a scarf encircling her neck and doubled across her breast. The scarf is not pinned open over her shoulders to show its pattern, but rather tucked into her waistband to keep it out of the way of her kitchen tasks. She stands next to a china cabinet in a shadowy dining room, where a ripe pineapple stands ready for cutting.

El Mandadero (Errand Boy) wears a modest peasant's straw hat and "camisa." He holds a pitcher of liquid (perhaps milk, or pulque, an alcoholic drink) and a basket laden with red peppers, onions, carrots, and other greens. His mien here is retiring, shy, unlike some of the characters in some of Arrieta's more raucous quotidian scenes.