The Spinner

The work of Francisco Laso marks one of the milestones in the creation of a national art. While the leading Peruvian artists of the period sought to incorporate themselves into the European artistic tradition, Laso reformulated French academicism, adapting it to the reality of his country. A student of Ignacio Merino in Lima, the painter completed his studies in France in the 1840s. Upon his return to Peru, in 1849 Laso became closely involved with the liberal intellectual movement of the time and participated in politics, becoming a congressman in 1857. His familiarity with the great national debates of the period enabled him to establish in his painting a rich and profound dialogue with the nation’s problems. The Spinner is a small sketch that reveals an unusual interest in portraying the rural Andean world through the conventions of academic painting. The painter used this same study to give form to the central figure of his great ‘Wayside Inn in the Highlands’ (Central Reserve Bank, Lima). The air of dignified nobility which defines this type of representation forms the basis of the process of idealization of the rural Andean world that Laso introduced into Peruvian painting. (NM)