In December 1857, as part of the tenth exhibition of the Academia de San Carlos, Eugenio Landesio (a painter from Turin who arrived in 1855 to set up landscape classes at the academy) exhibited two paintings representing the hacienda of Matlala, located in Tierra Caliente, between Izucar de Matamoros and Atlixco. One painting was a panoramic view of the hacienda and the other was of the great series of arches that supplied water. The second piece includes a portrait of its owner, the Basque architect Lorenzo Martinez de la Hidalga y Musitu (1810-1872), accompanied by his family.
In the corresponding catalog, the painter described the content of both canvases in detail. The description of the second piece is as follows: “View of the arches of the hacienda. A fresh water river es through this celebrated aqueduct. The Contla ranch visible through the opening of one of the arches, with Popocatepetl in the background. The river that meanders through the lowlands is lined by large leafy trees. To the right in the foreground you can see the author sketching the view and the estate owner's family".
Indeed, the artist sits on a rectangular rock (on which you can read the inscription: "Eugenio Landesio painted in Matlala, Mexico, 1858”) working with his portable field equipment. In his left hand he holds a palate and the mahlstick on which he rests his right hand as he paints the view of the landscape before him; all that is visible is the curved mountainous horizon under a blue sky. He is dressed in a smock or work apron, a yellow cloth hanging out of the pocket, stained with paint, which he uses to clean his brushes.
The rest of his belongings are strewn on the ground around him: a large parasol, a hat, a long cane, etcetera. A pair of young girls are observing the painter who is absorbed by his task: they are the two daughters of the De la Hidalga-Garcia Icazbalceta couple, Loreto and Pilar. The rest of the family is further away, on the right, where the architect De la Hidalga is standing, wearing a lordly suit for the countryside decorated with silver and wearing matching spurs. He is gesturing towards the aqueduct with his left hand. His wife, Ana Maria Garcia Icazbalceta, sits on a blanket laid out on the ground, with an open parasol shading the upper part of her face. She is accompanied by her two sons, who are dressed like their father as gentlemen landowners: Eusebio, the younger son, is lying on his stomach on the same blanket, and Ignacio, the older brother, is sitting. Behind Ignacio, another man reclines in the shade; he has a wide forehead and beard. Perhaps it is Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta, the well-known historian and writer, Loreto's brother-in-law and owner at that time of the sugar hacienda of Santa Clara de Montefalco. Eusebio seems to be watching the painter, while his brother looks at his father.
The sloping light, which enters from the left of the painting, illuminates the aqueduct's solid structure and spans, whose central area, marked by a tall, well-lit double arch, is reflected in the water of the river. At this exact spot, where the current narrows, three horsemen are about to cross. Further away you can see the backs of a family walking; the three tiny figures are fully discernible despite the distance. Even further back, through the upper great central arch, you can see a flock of sheep grazing on the hill. To the right, between the gaps in the upper row of arches you can make out the country house of the Contla ranch. On the opposite river bank, at the feet of the aqueduct, three peasants charged with looking after the horses take a nap. The horizon ends in a mountain chain with smooth, undulating contours, presided over by the majestic snowy peak of Popocatepetl ri on the left of the composition. Clouds accumulate around the summit of the volcano, turning the blue sky gray.
A mass of yellow flowers and cactus (biznagas abundant among them) adorn the foreground. However, the most prominent plant is a "body" with many "tubes" or branches which, thanks to its height and robust tree-shape, dominates the vertical side of the right half of the painting and serves to balance the strong horizontal impetus of the aqueduct's double arches. Equally perceptible is the play with diagonals that cross through the center of the composition. All of which provide the composition with a solid and harmonious geometric structure.
This landscape with family portrait is an "episode" and, at the same time, a portrait of the "environment" as a "symbolic expression of a position of class": a mixed genre consecrated by the European landowning aristocracy, which had reached its definitive form in English painting during the eighteenth century (we can think about Thomas Gainsborough, for example) and “which usually showed an order based on integrating the founding group into the heart of the patrimonial space". Just like the portraits situated in rural properties of this genre, there are no pretentious postures or gestures, rather a perfectly calculated "naturalness" and a quasi "informality". The landowners' lifestyle becomes a spectacle (for themselves, their peers and intimates), whose "perpetuity" is ensured through their pictorial record.
The artist, in this case Landesio, acts as a type of symbolic guarantor. His presence within the composition, "sketching the view" (that is, a landscape with mountains in the distance, analogous to what appears in the definitive painting) which not only refers to the proverbial theme of the "painting within a painting", but operates as a device to confirm legitimacy. It seems to tell us that the painter "was here", integrated into the family group and receiving the attention or iration of some of its . One of the characteristics of the De la Hidalga-Garcia Icazbalceta family was precisely their appreciation and dedication to the arts.
Don Lorenzo was a multifaceted man: adding to his profession of architect and his position as a landowner, that of an amateur painter, friend and patron to painters and sculptors. Originally from Maestu, in the Basque province of Alava, he belonged to a family that had established links with New Spain since the eighteenth century. Sebastian, Lorenzo's older brother, who was around twenty-five years his senior, had immigrated to America during the colonial aftermath. In 1815, in Mexico, he married Maria Josefa Blas Icazbalceta Musitu, who was also of Basque roots and belonged to a family dedicated to growing sugar, one of the most productive industries in New Spain after mining. Sebastian's wife was the blood aunt of Ana Maria Garcia Icazbalceta, his younger brother's future wife (twenty-five years later). Lorenzo and Ana Maria were also related: the mother of the first and grandmother of the second were sisters.
These family connections, which went back to the colonial era, could explain the architect De la Hidalga's decision to make the transatlantic voyage in 1838, and his permanent settlement in Mexico City, where he found a very fortuitous environment for exercising his profession, particularly during the forties, and for improving their social and financial position. By the end of the forties, he was not just the owner of a house on the way to Mariscala and a country house or villa near Buenavista, both of grand appearance, he also owned two sugar haciendas situated in the Izucar de Matamoros municipality: one in San Juan Colon and the other in San Lucas Matlala (the second had been property of his brother Sebastian).
Both Manuel Francisco Alvarez and Manuel Revilla, the first biographers of Lorenzo de la Hidalga, recorded the friendships that he cultivated with the academic masters Pelegrin Clave, Manuel Vilar and Eugenio Landesio, who were often invited to his table. They took it upon themselves to make portraits of the architect and his wife (Clave), to supervise the decoration of the villa with sculptures (Vilar) and paint perspectives of his urban and rural properties (Landesio himself or one of his students, such as Francisco Javier Alvarez). By the mid 1840s, Pedro Gualdi had already painted three views of De la Hidalga's most famous architectural work: Santa Anna Theater, or the National Theater, detailing its facade, patio or foyer, and its concert hall. Alvarez completed a view of the villa in Buenavista's garden, while Landesio, in addition to the two canvases dedicated to the hacienda of Matlala, created a spectacular multitudinous composition recreating the working activities in the Hacienda of Colon, which he exhibited along with the pair of oil paintings dedicated to the Hacienda of Matlala at the academic contest in 1857.
In comparison with the picture of Colon, whose teeming and bustling episode details the tasks and chores of a sugar mill, the Hacienda of Matlala is characterized by a more relaxed spirit; perhaps he wished to emphasize the theme of "leisure" rather than that of "productivity". References to work in this painting are not so apparent. The general view of the hacienda shows the residence in the distance while in the foreground it settles on a representation of a group of deer, a species of animal that, in the field of painting, is often associated with the recreation of the hunts of the elites in parks or hunting reserves. Meanwhile, the part of the composition that focuses on the Aqueduct, as has already been mentioned, is filled with references to artistic practice and aesthetic pleasure.
The painter has represented himself "sketching the view", as if in anticipation of the final painting. Between the two girls who take a keen interest in his work, discussing it between themselves, it seems to be the youngest, Pilar, who takes the lead. It was no wonder that she was one of the most important "young lady painters" in the second half of the nineteenth century; a private student of Clave, she exhibited at the Academia de San Carlos on seven occasions between 1857 and 1891, with the kind approval of critics. Her brother Eusebio observes the scene from a distance, while Ignacio looks at his father, as though acknowledging him, very much in his role as eldest son. However, we must not forget that both Ignacio and Eusebio decided to adopt their father's profession. A lively web of shared artistic interests are woven together.
The aqueduct itself was not just a vital hydraulic work to conduct and supply the volume of water required for cultivating sugarcane and running the mill to extract the juice, it is also an architectural composition of great beauty. Antonio de las Casas and Isabel Garcia described it as follows:
It has a central body, composed of two strong and elevated buttresses that serve as for several large, rounded, overlapping arches. The top is under five small arches. Two rows of smaller overlapping arches develop on both sides of this central body. The ensemble gives the impression of a construction that is as strong as it is elegant and clearly demonstrates its author's mastery. Although no longer in good condition, much of it has been preserved. (…) Its grandeur and elegance makes it comparable to the best examples of Roman aqueducts, such as the Pont du Gard, and Ottoman aqueducts like the Moglova or of any period, it is even more surprising because it is an aqueduct of a hacienda.
In the landscape conceived by Landesio, the aqueduct's visual protagonism is strengthened by the presence and position of the architect De la Hidalga to the point that it reaches the category of a twin device: on the one hand it credits and celebrates the socio-economic rise of the "ranch owner" in his condition as an entrepreneur involved in the sugar industry. On the other, the "great arches" as master work in a particular, useful and beautiful moment, according to the classical vitruvian ideal, paradigm of the art of construction, proclaims and exalts the professional renown of the hacienda's owner.
