The Portrait d'un Espagnol appears to be the original title for this portrait of the Spanish decorative artist and book designer Hermenegildo or Hermán Alsina. It was first exhibited in Paris in the Salon d'Automme of 1912 (October-November), with this title. From there the work went onto be exhibited the following year in Munich, at that time a renowned international art center - second only to Paris on the continent - at the Munich "Secession" exhibition of March-May 1913. There it was also titled Porträt eines Spaniers and significantly, also listed as "verkäflich" (for sale). It was not seen publicly until it appeared on the market in 1968. The painting has seen been variously mis-identified as either a portrait of the French painter of urban Parisian scenes, Miguel Utrillo (presumably because the subject of this portrait bears a slight resemblance to the tall and lanky, mustachioed Frenchman of School of Paris fame), and as a portrait of Rivera's Spanish teacher, the painter Eduardo Chicharro, to which the figure bears no resemblance at all. In his memoirs Rivera himself recalled the painting as either The Man with the Umbrella (My Art, My Life p. 85) or as a Retrato de Alsina (Confesiones de Diego Rivera, p. 114). In the latter memoir Rivera accurately recalled that "El Retrato de Alsina en el Saón de Otoño (1912), tuvo bastante éxito. It was indeed favorably reviewed in several Parisian journals and illustrated int he prestigious art magazine of that time, L'Art Décoratif (Oct.-Nov., 1912). Little is known about the Catalán-born Alsina, but he appears to have been a friend of Rivera, living also in Paris, in the famous lair of emigré artists' studios known as La Ruche (the "Beehive").
There is a small gouache or oil study for this portrait which I know only from a photograph, but it is inscribed with the name of the subject: "Heman Alsina". In the study, the Catlalan artist does not have an umbrella, but rather his hands tucked firmly in his coat pockets. Rivera seems to have taken considerably liberty in making him appear refined and elegant - not too distant from his treatment of the Mexican artist Adolfo Best Maugaurd, which Rivera would paint the following year in another large canvas that is today in Mexico City's National Museum of Art.

Rivera's Portrait of Alsina is a major work for the year 1912. He was then living between Barcelona, Toledo and Paris, and working through the over-powering style of Zuloaga, the most popular Spanish painter with an international reputation at the time and his own careful study of El Greco. The large elongated figure of Alsina, looming before the El Grecoan-inspired tempestuous sky and broad Castillan landscape, is a testament to this experimentation. The work is transitional and pre-Cézannian, pre-Cubist in Rivera's oeuvre, and bears the last remnants of Zuloaga's overbearing bravura realism, which he was trying to expunge from his stylistic development. As Rivera he himself recalled about the painting in 1912, "Volví de nuevo a Toledo, dejando en Salón de Otoño un retrato del maestro catalán en artes del libro, Alsina, y un cuadro de los Toledo muy influido por el Greco, pero con indeseables resabios de pintura moderna española...(Confesiones p. 114) (I returned anew to Toledo [in 1912] leaving behind at the Salon d'Automme, a Portrait of the Catalán master of the Art of the Book, Alsina, and another painting from Toledo, much influenced by El Greco, but with undesirable traits of modern Spanish painting)

Ramón Favela
March 21, 1994
Santa Barbara, California