Gaucho

Juan Manuel Blanes is one of the most important Latin American artists of the second half of the nineteenth century. He devoted his work to recording the essential episodes of the history and tradition of Uruguay, Argentina and Chile, and is best known for his gaucho paintings. As seen in this work, Blanes most often depicted the gaucho stock-still, as though posing, alone or with his horse in the meadows under limpid open skies and over verdant plains. The gaucho's rebellious spirit, pride and love for freedom were idealized by Blanes who romanticized this way of life

Blanes was essentially a self-taught artist and his natural gifts as a draftsman had already begun to show in the primary school of Juan Cabral, where he sketched local scenes with such a fluency that his teacher urged him to study art. Although he traveled to Europe four times, he never altered his artistic tradition. He defined his position of resistance to trends in European aesthetics as a means of responding to South American needs. Juan Manuel Blanes advocated a style, ideally expressing the history and customs of the American continent.