Felipe Santiago Gutiérrez

Biography

Sources differ on his birth date: 20 May 1824 is the more common, and one version gives 1823. The place is certain: Texcoco, now in the State of Mexico.

His father was a soldier and died when the boy was eleven. His mother moved the family to Mexico City, and in 1836 Gutiérrez entered the Academy of San Carlos. His teacher there was Pelegrí Clavé, a Catalan painter close to the Nazarenes, the German Purist artists known for their religious subjects. From that circle Gutiérrez kept an interest in biblical and historical themes and a restrained manner. “The Oath of Brutus” (1857) turns to the history of ancient Rome; it is linked with the year of the Reform, and its subject was read as civic and patriotic. For three Nazarene works and one Neoclassical one he received prizes from the Academy between 1850 and 1858. In 1848 Gutiérrez settled in Toluca and began teaching drawing and painting at the Literary Institute, now the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico. Until 1854 he travelled through the provinces giving classes, and by some accounts he stayed at the Institute for almost ten years. Alongside this he painted portraits, which were in great demand at the time and brought him income and recognition. With that money he toured the Bajío and other parts of the country, visited American cities, and saved enough for a trip to Europe.

Sources disagree on the dates of his journeys abroad. By some accounts he was in the United States between 1862 and 1868, then studied in Rome, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Florence, Bologna and Turin. By others, the American trip fell in 1868–1872. In Madrid he reportedly worked briefly with Federico de Madrazo. In Paris he studied the nude, and in Rome he began painting female nudes.

In 1874 he painted “Huntress of the Andes”. It was the first full female nude shown in Mexico: it was hung at the Academy of San Carlos in a room for foreign artists, behind a curtain, and only “gentlemen of age” were admitted. When the picture was exhibited in Mexico again in 1891, by some accounts it caused a small scandal. The Academy selected his “Saint Sebastian” for the international exhibition in Philadelphia in 1875–1876.

In New York he met the Colombian writer and diplomat Rafael Pombo, who invited him to Bogotá. Sources give different years for the move: 1873, 1880, or somewhere between. In Colombia Gutiérrez stayed for a long time, received awards, and in 1886 became a founder and the first director of the School of Fine Arts, which opened on 20 July 1886. From there he also wrote to Mexico, and in Mexico itself, according to reports, he published art criticism and technical manuals on painting. His work was shown in New Orleans and Philadelphia (1884), in Paris (1889), and in San Francisco, New York and Bogotá.

In 1894 he returned to Texcoco and lived there until his death on 4 April 1904.

In December 1992 the Museo Felipe Santiago Gutiérrez opened in Toluca. It holds 225 works by him and his followers, arranged by theme, and shares its building with the museum of José María Velasco Gómez. Twelve of his oil paintings are in the National Museum of Colombia, the largest public collection of his work in that country. His work is also in the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico City and in several libraries and museums in Bogotá, among them the Quinta de Bolívar.