AND IT WAS A PARTY...

Plaza de Mayo (Mayo Square). Civic celebration. Buenos Aires. 1902.


Watercolor on paper, signed and dated. Measurements: 20.5 x 34 cm. (8.07 x 13.38 in.) Copy in good condition.


The scene shows us a national celebration in the Plaza de Mayo with a detail of the pyramid and behind the Cathedral, the entire stage banded and with an audience dressed in all the luxuries, circulating and talking. It is a successful composition of historical customs on the May celebrations, in which Lambrecht was inspired by the lithography of Charles Pellegrini from the album Memories of the Río de la Plata of 1841.


"Precious composition, piece of a good draftsman", assures us the art historian Rodrigo Gutiérrez Viñuales (1), who did not include him in his monumental work "Argentine books. Illustration and modernity (1910-1936)”.


Of French origin, A. Lambrecht settled in Argentina and worked as an illustrator in "Caras y Caretas" and "La Ilustración Sudamericana". In a 1904 text by Francisco Latzina, entitled "Argentina and its painters" (2), he is included among other foreign artists: "(...) Bonifanti, Antonio Delle Vedove, Manuel Mayol, Adolfo Lambrecht, Nicolau Cotanda, Francisco Parisi, Angelo Tommasi, etc. Parisi is the author of the internal decoration of the cathedral.” 


Apparently, Lambrecht arrived in Buenos Aires in 1902, in the same year that he did this work; in 1901 he illustrated the cover of the book “Vies des Dames galantes de Brantome”, edited by Charles Carrington, in Paris. No doubt he was a fine illustrator of gallant ladies; We see it in this watercolor and he also reflected it on the back covers of "Caras y Caretas".


Lambrecht was part of the group of illustrators who worked for the book “Chile in Argentina. South American Confraternity. Reception of the Chilean delegation in Buenos Aires. 25 of May. - June 6, 1903. " (3) He did it together with Cao (José María Cao Luaces), Manuel Larravide, Francisco Parisi, Martín A. Malharro, and Castro Rivera.


Notes:

1. Personal communication from Rodrigo Gutiérrez Viñuales.

2. Martín Fierro. Revista popular ilustrada y de crítica literaria. Buenos Aires, September 1, 1904, Year 1, No. 26.

3. Edited in Buenos Aires: Heliographic workshops of Ortega and Radaelli, 1903.

We appreciate the information provided by art historian Roberto Amigo.


AUTHOR ADOLFO LAMBRECHT



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