Pueyrredón, Prilidiano (1823-1870)
Lavanderas en el bajo de Belgrano (Washerwomen in Belgrano)
1865
Oil on canvas, 102 x 126.5 cm
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires
The first institutional destination of Lavanderas en el Bajo de Belgrano was the Museo Histórico Nacional, where it remained from 1893. The painting appears in the inaugural catalogue of the MNBA in 1896, so it must have been requested to join the collection, and then made effective as a donation by Santiago Calzadilla without a precise date. Calzadilla, a friend of Pueyrredón, is remembered both as the author of the book of memories Las belledas de mi tiempo and for being the model for the excellent portrait of Pueyrredón from 1859.
In this painting, the landscape predominates, although with the presence of figures. Jorge Romero Brest understood this clearly, when he stated that it is the landscape in which he has achieved the greatest unity “because a fundamental structure can be guessed, in which the picturesque elements – ombú, washerwoman, animals – carry the sentimental note embedded in it.” On the other hand, it is a complex composition where the sky, unlike most of his work, is not decisive in the organization of the composition. The “sentimental note” is the maternal figure with the tub with a mess of clothes on her head and the child riding a donkey that drives the pair of oxen, accompanied by a dog. The costumbrista motifs, however, are subsumed in the structure of the landscape, they do not have –despite the title- a visual relevance as, for example, in Un alto en el campo from only four years before, or in other paintings where only the washerwoman type is represented.
The rough edges of the foreground announce the proximity of the river, after the crossroads the ravine rises to the left, with a house on top, and a leafy ombú tree to the right occupying the entire side. Unlike other works, it presents greater impasto, a palette dominated by greens and ochres. Pueyrredón was able to move through different variables of naturalism, and achieve subtle captures of natural light in the landscape, escaping, as Adolfo Ribera pointed out, an aesthetic pigeonholing: from the academic canons derived from neoclassicism to a painting of greater plastic sensuality, with romantic aspects, or as in this case, in a naturalism close to the French landscape painting of the Barbizon school. (Roberto Amigo | MNBA)
See also:
• Belgrano (Buenos Aires)