Expediciones - exploraciones

1789 · ref. 48038 — Puerto Deseado Argentina. ca. 1789. Two Extraordinary Native American Portraits from the Malaspina Expedition A superb pair of highly finished red chalk portraits of two Patagonians made at Puerto Deseado in southern Argentina during the Malaspina expedition by one of the expedition's artists. The Malaspina Expedition was Spain's single effort at a voyage of exploration and discovery comparable to the great English and French voyages of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. More specifically it was designed to gain geographical knowledge and underpin Spain's territorial claims to the Northwest coast of America. It also had ambitious plans to publish its findings in the tradition of the other great European voyages. The Malaspina voyage is famous for the quality of the scientific material collected not least the anthropological drawings of peoples drawn at their many ports of call accurate and lifelike depictions very much in the tradition of the artists who accompanied James Cook William Hodges and John Webber. The expedition circumnavigated the globe leaving Cadiz on July 30 1789 visiting the coast of Patagonia in November working on the west coast of the Americas in 1790 and 1791 and ultimately returned to Spain in 1794 after a five-year voyage. Although unsigned both portraits offered here have been firmly attributed to voyage artist José de Pozo Ximénez 1757-1821 who made a series of drawings in Patagonia including one sketch in which he and his fellow artist Pineda are depicted in the act of drawing some of the local people. Pozo Ximénez was a native of Seville hired as an expedition painter by the Spanish government in June 1789. At the time of his recruitment he was described as "an excellent subject and perspective painter having a very good education with a wealth of geometry and is very robust for the age of 32" quoted in Puig-Samper p.18. A specialist in perspective and portraits his ethnological work is considered his greatest contribution to the results of the voyage but although Malaspina admired his "accuracy and speed" Journal of the Voyage p.140 the commander became increasingly infuriated with what he saw as the artist's laziness and indifference and forced him to leave the expedition in Callao in May 1790. Although ordered back to Spain Pozo in fact never left Peru founding a school of painting in Lima. The bulk of his Malaspina voyage originals are in the Museo Naval Madrid where much of the original material from the expedition resides. The portraits depict a man and woman drawn during a well-recorded encounter between the Spanish and the Patagonians in December 1789. It can be established that the man is a chief called "Junchar"; and the young woman is apparently the young woman called "Jujana" or "Cátama" who is described in detail in Malaspina's journal as having captivated the Spanish officers. The expedition had reached Puerto Deseado in late 1789 and Malaspina personally describes their interaction with a local tribe of some forty people on three separate occasions pp.85-90. Pozo joined Malaspina on the second of these visits drawing these portraits and a larger sketch of the encounter between the Spanish officers and a large group of Patagonians a sketch which seems to have an each-way bet on whether they were in fact giants: Pozo's Patagonians are strapping but not absurdly tall Serrano plate 36. Indeed it is plausible that the two present portraits are of people who are also in that larger scene: Junchar may be the man with a cloak over one shoulder talking to one of the Spanish men while the young woman could conceivably be the person standing at the far right of the Patagonians with dark eyes and parted hair. What is clear is that both subjects were described in detail by Malaspina personally. Of Junchar he notes: "In general they were all including the women and children very large and solidly built. Their height was not in proportion to their build but they were tall: the cacique Junchar who was carefully measured by Don Antonio Pineda and found to be six Burgos feet and ten inches in height and almost twenty-three inches broad from shoulder to shoulder" p.87. No doubt Junchar was singled out by Pozo because his large stature spoke to the ancient misconception of Patagonians as giants a myth which had gripped the European imagination since the time of Magellan. In a much longer passage Malaspina also describes how they singled out one particular woman to have her portrait taken: a "Patagonian girl aged about fourteen later referred to as Jujana by Malaspina whose good looks great charm and exceptional loquacity had made us choose to portray her rather than the other women was drawn to our attention even more when the time came for them to go ashore" as she struggled to modestly use her poncho to carry away some biscuits and vegetables that had been given to her as a gift p.89. In the catalogue raisonné of the art of the Malaspina voyage Carmen Sotos Serrano located two preliminary gridded sketches of these portraits "Patagon" and "contorno de la Patagone" respectively see cat. 39 and 40. Pozo also did a full-length study of Junchar and two other studies of a second woman with child cat. 41 and 42. All of these sketches are in the Museo Naval in Madrid which collection also includes two later oil paintings of Junchar and the young woman now called "Cátama." The oils were acquired by the museum in 1932. The drawings presently offered were originally in an album or portfolio entitled "Spanish Drawings" which had been acquired by Elizabeth Lady Holland when travelling extensively in Spain between 1802 and 1805. The Whatman paper into which they have been window-mounted for the album is watermarked 1801 confirming this approximate date of acquisition and their having been mounted in an album. Many of the other drawings in the collection were topographical works by another Malaspina voyage artist Fernando Brambila. When the present drawings were sold in the large sale of drawings from Holland House in 1979 they were attributed to Brambila with the rather telling comment that "no comparable drawings by the artist are recorded." However a comparison with the works illustrated by Serrano and a reading of the journals make it clear that Pozo Ximénez is the artist. Because Malaspina quickly fell into official disfavor and with the disruptions of the Napoleonic Wars the extensive planned publications of the expeditions never came to be. Virtually all of the archives of the voyage are now to be found in the Museo Naval in Madrid. These drawings acquired only a few years after the return of the voyage by Lady Holland are thus among the very few original works of the voyage to ever appear in the market. An extraordinary opportunity to acquire two significant portraits of Native Americans from one of the greatest voyages of the Second Age of Exploration. Two red chalk drawings: the young woman on a sheet 228 x 190 mm. paper watermarked with a combined "P" and smaller "L"; the man "Junchar" on a sheet 228 x 195 mm. Both drawings window-mounted probably about 1801 into a larger sheet of Whatman paper with ink borders added. Fine. HOWGEGO I M26. Carmen Sotos Serrano Los Pintores de la Expedicion de Alejandro Malaspina Madrid 1982 cat. 39-42. Miguel Ãngel Puig-Samper "Illustrators of the New World: The Image in the Spanish Scientific Expeditions of the Enlightenment" in Culture and History Digital Journal Vol. 1 no. 2 December 2012 pp.1-28. Andrew David et al. eds. The Malaspina Expedition 1789-1794 Journal of the Voyage by Alejandro Malaspina Vol. 1 Cadiz to Panama London: The Hakluyt Society 2001. unknown