Doña María de los Dolores Gutiérrez del Mazo y Pérez
1 of 2
About this Brooklyn Icon
The Brooklyn Museum is commemorating its 200th anniversary by spotlighting 200 standout objects in its encyclopedic collection.
José Campeche, who was largely self-taught, was Puerto Rico’s most celebrated portraitist and religious painter in his lifetime. His background was unlike that of most of his sitters, including the subject of this portrait. Campeche’s father was an enslaved Puerto Rican man of African heritage who purchased his freedom after working as a painter and gilder, and his mother was a white Spanish woman. There are relatively few paintings by Campeche in museums in the United States.
In this work, Campeche depicts the 21-year-old bride of Don Benito Pérez, who would later become the viceroy of New Granada in South America. A Spanish-born member of Puerto Rico’s colonial elite like her husband, she wears diamonds and a white muslin chemise dress, a style then at the height of European fashion. Such expensive self-fashioning, enabled by an extractive economy, was among the most significant ways that Spaniards living in the colonies expressed their high social status.
Object Label
José Campeche, who was largely self-taught, was Puerto Rico’s celebrated portrait and religious painter. His father was an enslaved Puerto Rican man of African heritage who purchased his freedom after working as a painter and gilder, and his mother was a white Spanish woman. Here, he depicted a Spanish-born member of Puerto Rico’s colonial elite, wearing diamonds and a white muslin chemise dress—then at the height of European fashion. This portrait was made when the sitter was twenty-one, around the time of her marriage to Don Benito Pérez (their names are written on the folded letters on the desk), a fellow Spaniard who would later become viceroy of New Granada, in South America.
Caption
José Campeche Puerto Rican, 1751–1809. Doña María de los Dolores Gutiérrez del Mazo y Pérez, ca. 1796. Oil on canvas, 32 11/16 x 26 in. (83 x 66 cm) frame (frame measured 2022): 45 1/4 × 30 1/4 × 6 1/2 in. (114.9 × 76.8 × 16.5 cm) frame: 43 5/16 x 29 1/2 x 4 1/2 in. (110.1 x 74.9 x 11.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Lilla Brown in memory of her husband, John W. Brown, by exchange, 2012.45. No known copyright restrictions (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2012.45_PS6.jpg)
Tags
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
Doña María de los Dolores Gutiérrez del Mazo y Pérez
Date
ca. 1796
Medium
Oil on canvas
Classification
Dimensions
32 11/16 x 26 in. (83 x 66 cm) frame (frame measured 2022): 45 1/4 × 30 1/4 × 6 1/2 in. (114.9 × 76.8 × 16.5 cm) frame: 43 5/16 x 29 1/2 x 4 1/2 in. (110.1 x 74.9 x 11.4 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Lilla Brown in memory of her husband, John W. Brown, by exchange
Accession Number
2012.45
Rights
No known copyright restrictions
This work may be in the public domain in the United States. Works created by United States and non-United States nationals published prior to 1923 are in the public domain, subject to the terms of any applicable treaty or agreement. You may download and use Brooklyn Museum images of this work. Please include caption information from this page and credit the Brooklyn Museum. If you need a high resolution file, please fill out our online application form (charges apply). The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties, such as artists or artists' heirs holding the rights to the work. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act. The Brooklyn Museum makes no representations or warranties with respect to the application or terms of any international agreement governing copyright protection in the United States for works created by foreign nationals. For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.
Frequent Art Questions
Do you have any information about this frame? I’m quite curious as to who made it.
Unfortunately, we do not know the name of the craftsman who produced the frame. It is very beautiful.The arrows in the quiver are almost certainly an allusion to cupid's bow and love, as this portrait was commissioned on the occasion of the sitter's marriage!It is really gorgeous! Thank you so much for all of your help.Can you tell me more about her?
Doña María de los Dolores Gutiérrez del Mazo y Pérez, painted here by José Campeche, was born in Spain but moved to Puerto Rico, then a Spanish colony, when she was 15 years old.At 21 she was married to Don Benito Pérez, and this painting was created to commemorate the occasion. The letters on her desk say the names of both her and her husband, who would later become viceroy of New Granada.New Granada, at the time, was a large territory that included parts of modern Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, Guyana, Panama, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela.Awesome, thanks!What can you tell me about the painter?
The painter was known as the most gifted and prized portraitist in Puerto Rico at the time. He is known for painting images of the wealthy in their homes especially in San Juan. Campeche was mostly self taught, but also learned from Luis Paret y Alcázar, a Spanish court painter who was exiled to Puerto Rico in the late 1770s.Are their other works by this artist (Campeche) or other Caribbean artists?
This is our only work on view by Campeche, but Camille Pissarro whose work you can find in Infinite Blue, is from St. Thomas and is of Portuguese descent.What! Il est français.Oui, mais il est né en St. Thomas. We also have a number of ancient Caribbean works in the Life, Death, and Transformation on the fifth floor.Merci!De rien!What was a typical compensation like for an artist such as Campeche? Or is it another example of an artist who's work was not valuable until after death?
These were commissioned works so they were certainly valued by the person they were meant for and served as status symbols in the home. We are appreciating it on a different level in this museum context, as both evidence of the artist's skill but also a kind of historical record. As for the kind of compensation Campeche received, we don't have a record of even an approximate amount but it would have been something only elite members of society could afford.Would an artist like that be considered wealthy while at that time?That's a great question. He would have definitely been comfortable but not nearly as rich as the people he was paintng.May I ask why this picture is in the European Art gallery? I only ask because the label says the artist is Puerto Rican.
This painting is included in our European Art gallery because it was created within a purely European painting tradition. The sitter was even born in Europe and wished to be painted as a European.Art of the colonial Americas can be thought from multiple viewpoints and we try to represent all of them in the way these works are curated in the museum. You'll notice colonial art in the context European, American, and Indigenous art galleries.
Have information?
Have information about an artwork? Contact us at
