Palmeras (Palms)

Cuban landscape painting came to fruition during the second half of the nineteenth century and provided a salient point of reference for later generations of artists, among them Eduardo Morales, a veteran of the War of Independence (1895-98). In the first decades of the twentieth century, Morales produced a small but important body of work composed of landscapes of the countryside. They recall those by the Cuban-born French painter Phillipe Chartrand, who studied in Paris with the realist painters of the Barbizon school and later taught at Havana’s San Alejandro Academy. In Palmeras, a group of slim palm trees rise above and beyond the surrounding vegetation while the blue sky appears expansive and airy behind the green and lush crests. The palma real, Cuba’s national tree, is a recurrent motif throughout Morales’ oeuvre, conveying the nationalist spirit fostered by the War of Independence and a sense of nostalgia for the pastoral lifestyle of yore.

Text credit: Produced in collaboration with the University of Maryland Department of Art History & Archaeology and Patricia Ortega-Miranda