Portrait of Maria Catalina de Urrutia

Campeche was the most sought-after portraitist in San Juan society in the last two decades of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. His portraits, set in luxurious rococo interiors portray personages belonging to a wealthy minority within the Puerto Rican population. These were influenced by the work of Luis Paret y Alcázar (1746-1799), a Spanish artist banished by the crown in the island, from whom Campeche probably learned about the fashion and interior design prevailing in European aristocratic circles of the period.
In his Portrait of María Catalina de Urrutia, who was the wife of the governor and captain-general of Puerto Rico, Juan Andrés Dabán y Busterino (1783-1789), Campeche presents the lady accompanied by her son in a richly decorated rococo interior. Her intense and determined features are highlighted by the woman's enormous powdered wig, like those popular among the eighteenth-century European aristocracy, and the delicate lace ruffles that frame it.