The Bourgeois Family Portrait in Post-Rosist Buenos Aires through the Work of B. Marcel as Anticipations of Modernity

Abstract

After the battle of Caseros in the Río de la Plata a new modality of portrait, the family portrait is incorporated. The theme of the family became central as a subject of representation in a field dominated by religious and patriotic symbols during previous decades. Within this modality, Retrato de Manuel Benavente y Dora Guardo de Benavente is a large work executed in 1860 by the unknown painter B. Marcel. Although currently exhibited in one of the most emblematic museums in Buenos Aires, there are few studies that refer to it, generally from canonical points of view, based on the notion of originality and genius. In this study, we will try to make a new approach to the work recognizing its possible links with photography, its inscription in a pre-institutional artistic context but with great private demand, and the construction of the concepts of class and gender. We argue that this portrait of B. Marcel embodies that long-term process of rise and self-recognition of the small and medium bourgeoisies that laid the foundations of national modernity. A history of the portrait that is also a history of the conquest of bourgeois taste.