In Colombia, the year 1886 marked both the establishment of a Republic and that of its first art school. It was no coincidence then that both a new government and its official art academy were founded in the same year. Prior to1886 Colombia had undergone a series of reincarnations in name, territory, and constitution: it had been Gran Colombia (1819), then the Republic of Nueva Granada (1831), and finally the United States of Colombia (1863). The central tenets of this new republic had been articulated two years prior when Rafael Núñez (1824-1894) had first won the presidency, thus initiating La Regeneración (The Regeneration) under the banner of “Regeneration or catastrophe.” The Republic of Colombia effectively dissolved the Liberalism of Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, including the 1863 Constitution of Rio Negro, which had established limited presidential power and anti-clerical states, and recognized the right to bear arms. Additionally, Núñez rekindled Colombia’sr elationship with the Roman Catholic Church through El Concordato de 1887 (The 1887 Concordat), resulting in a wave of conservatism that ushered in suppression and censorship resulting in the outbreak of the civil war known as the Thousand Days War in 1899. 1

In establishing the Republic of Colombia and his political movement, La Regeneración, Núñez’s goal was to position Colombia on an international stage by projecting a sense of cosmopolitanism that simultaneously, and somewhat ironically, embraced the conservative values and moral order of the 1887 Concordat. By definition, a “cosmopolitan” individual is “a citizen of the cosmos,” yet for Núñez the concept of a world culture was defined in relation to Europe (and to France in particular), and understood in terms of how the periphery—in this case, Colombia—positioned itself with respect to the center. 2 Networks of exchange, established from as early as the colonial period, determined a clearly uneven set of power relations between Latin America and Europe, and thereby reflected the complex relationships between the two world regions, as seen through the liberation of Gran Colombia under the leadership of the criollo liberator Simón Bolívar. After independence contact between the two continents gradually increased, and brought with it the emergence of new travelers, that of Latin American artists in Paris who, much like Núñez, were perceived as “marginal cosmopolitans” in their efforts towards global citizenship. 3

The cosmopolitanism of La Regeneración is best reflected in its nationalist rebranding, economic boom, and institutionalization campaign, as well as in Núñez’s desire that Colombia should rival, if not be on a par with the rest of the “world.” Written by Miguel Antonio Caro, the Constitution of 1886 declared all former states “departments” which would now have to report to a centralized government, and in so doing eliminated any sense of regional identity in favor of a unified nationalist agenda. Rather than structuring a political understanding of Colombia based on its regional and cultural diversity, a result of its diverse topography, 4 Núñez attempted to essentialize the very meaning of what it meant to be Colombian, and defined it as a collective experience based on a shared political agenda and an integrated economy.

However, the distances between these departments and the lack of proper roadways prevented this integration, perhaps with one notable exception: the coffee boom, which peaked in the mid-1890s. 5 The peak did not last long, as tariffs, inflation, and currency devaluation resulted in its demise and the outbreak of the Thousand Days War, polarizing the country and pitting liberals, who represented the coffee-plantation and business owners, against conservatives. Núñez was unsuccessful in his efforts to control the issuing of paper money, otherwise provided by private financial institutions, and to standardize currency into paper money, and this kind of mismatch between the ambitious projects of La Regeneración and its achievements would be characteristic of the period. 6

The 1886 Constitution also called for an institutional overhaul that strengthened the National Army and expanded the education system, including the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (National University of Colombia), which grew from four schools (or departments) to nine, among them the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (National School of Fine Arts). Since the constitution also proclaimed Catholicism to be the country’s official religion, it also made its teaching mandatory in public institutions like the Universidad Nacional, facilitated and authorized the construction of religious institutions, and gave priests the power to censor schools. 7 In addition to this, the 1887 Concordat went even further by declaring the Church immune to civil power.

It is in this context of intense nationalism, prosperity, institutionalization, and religiosity that the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes flourished, which explains why the academic yet controversial practice of painting from the female nude was met with both anticipation and uproar. The aim of this paper is to position the nationalism of the Republic of Colombia and the academicism of its first art school as complementary and codependent occurrences by arguing that the nation- and institution-building efforts of La Regeneración were parallel goals, both of which reflected a premature desire for internationalism amidst provincial ideologies and infrastructures. Taking the academic nude as the vehicle through which these tensions came into view, this paper hopes to reposition and indeed expand our understanding of the nude as a purely “academic” instrument, and to redefine it instead, beyond its pedagogical significance within the European tradition, as the embodiment of cultural tensions in a country that was in the midst of transition.

The Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in Bogotá

In 1886 art instruction was formalized in Colombia with the establishment of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, which that same year organized the country’s first fine arts exhibition and sought to set the standards governing these exhibitions and teaching in general. The school not only marked the earliest effort to consolidate a transformation from artisan to artist, but also the inception of what critic and curator Eduardo Serrano has termed the idea of “‘contemporary art’ in the country.” 8 The exhibitions organized by the school also transformed literary writers, journalists, and even artists into art critics, thus heralding the beginning of the disciplines of art criticism and art history in Colombia.

Many of the Escuela’s early instructors and directors were trained abroad, arguably as a result of its decision to promote a cosmopolitan artistic tradition. During La Regeneración, between 1886 and 1899, the government funded a large number of artists to travel to Paris for training. 9 Among these artists were Francisco A. Cano, Pedro Carlos Manrique, Salvador Moreno, and Epifanio Garay (Img. 1). The cultural policies of this era privileged internationally trained artists and, as mentioned above, this sense of cosmopolitanism was predominantly linked to French literary, philosophical, and visual culture, as a reflection of what historian Frédéric Martínez has called the “syndrome of ‘French Europe.’” 10 This was the case not only in Colombia but throughout Latin America, as seen in the example of Peruvian Francisco Laso and his French “cosmopolitanism,” 11 and in the artistic careers of Argentinean painters Eduardo Sívori and EduardoSchiaffino. 12

Among these Paris-trained travelers-turned-instructors, Epifanio Garay offers an interesting perspective through which to understand the classicizing, yet paradoxically modern practice of painting from life, and the way in which it fit into the larger nation-building efforts of La Regeneración.

Image 1
Epifanio Garay, Caricature by Garay, 1884.

Ink on paper, 5 × 6.3 in. (12.5 × 16 cm.)

Museo Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá.

Epifanio Garay and Rafael Núñez

Epifanio Garay lived a cultured and privileged life. Through the study of classical voice in New York City and of painting in Bogotá (first under the tutelage of José Manuel Groot and later under Mexican painter Felipe Santiago Gutierrez) Garay developed parallel careers in the musical and visual arts. However, Gutierrez’s mentorship would prove to be a turning point in his career, to the extent that it culminated in his earning a scholarship to study abroad in Paris in 1881. Gutierrez’s influence on Garay can be seen not only in his decision to study in Paris, as Gutierrez himself had done earlier, but in his commitment to the professionalization of art teaching after his return, evidenced in the leadership roles Garay occupied at art schools in both Bogotá and Cartagena. 13 A neoclassical yet costumbrista painter, Gutierrez combined high-brow academism with the “local color” of particular regions, customs, and types, forging what Mey-Yen Moriuchi has described as an “alliance between artistic culture and nationalistic discourse,” 14 which Garay emulated.

Garay’s peripatetic life also paralleled that of Gutierrez, in that he moved from Panama to Colombia, then to New York, and finally to Paris, where he enrolled at the Académie Julian from 1882 to 1884, and exhibited at the Salon of 1886. 15 Upon his return to Colombia in 1885 Garay settled in Cartagena, the native city of then-President Rafael Núñez. Here, he painted his first portrait of Núñez (Img. 2), who had served as President first in 1880, and then in 1884. In this monumental, life-size portrait Garay captures Núñez in a contemplative pose, absorbed in deep thought and surrounded by books in his study. The work is similar in composition and style to the portraits that had come to define the iconography of European and US political leaders like French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte ( Jacques-Louis David, The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries, 1812) (Img. 3) and US President George Washington (Gilbert Stuart, George Washington (The Landsdowne Portrait), 1796).

Image 2
Epifanio Garay, Portrait of Rafael Núñez,1891.

Oil on canvas, 103.5 × 80 in. (263 × 203 cm.)

Museo Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá.

Image 3
Jacques-Louis David, The Emperor Napoleon in his Study at the Tuileries, 1812.

Oil on canvas, 203.9 × 125.1 cm

National Gallery of Art)

Although he painted the portrait at Núñez’s estate of El Cabrero in Cartagena, a coastal city with hot and humid weather, Garay depicts Núñez wearing a dark suit and coat, and surrounded by rich red velvet drapery, an attire and décor that would have been more commonly associated with the high-altitude city of Bogotá. The desk against which Núñez leans his right elbow in the painting, still preserved today at his estate, had been imported from France, further removing the image from its actual location. In rejecting any sense of regionalism, as neither attire nor furniture bear any relation to the city of Cartagena, Garay’s painting reflects the standards of academic art, as seen in the example of David, including the seamless brushwork and even lighting, the depiction of political leaders as intellectuals, and the classicizing aesthetics of the decorative arts. The fact that Garay’s painting was produced beyond these chronological and geographical barriers is proof of the potential of academic painting to communicate universal values through a shared cosmopolitan language.

The portrait of Núñez serves as an indicator of the visual culture that flourished during La Regeneración and of the demand for portraiture in this style. This is evidenced most clearly in Garay’s professional success as a portraitist, 16 recording fashionable socialites and political icons like President Manuel A. Sanclemente, whom he depicted, much like Núñez, seated at his desk before a red curtain. Garay also painted genre scenes and biblical narratives, most famously La mujer del levita de los Montes de Efraín (The Levite’s Wife from the Ephraim Mountains, 1899) (Img. 4), the first nude in Colombian painting.

Image 4
Epifanio Garay, Woman of the Levite from the Ephraim Mountains, 1899.

Oil on canvas, 54.7 × 78.1 in. (139 × 198.5 cm.),

Museo Nacional de Colombia

In 1893, Garay joined the faculty of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in Bogotá, where he served on and off as Professor and Director until the school was shut down due to the Thousand Days War of 1899. In 1903 Garay passed away, before the end of the war and the reopening of the academy. Given the artistic pedigree that he had acquired under the tutelage of Gutierrez and in Paris, and his experience as a painter working in the academic style and as a painter of portraits, Garay seemed an obvious choice to lead the school. Nonetheless, he would come to challenge the Catholic dogma of Núñez’s 1887 Concordat and test the limits of Colombian artistic culture. How far was the government of La Regeneración willing to establish cosmopolitan artistic taste at the expense of challenging religion and morality?

Painting the “Academic” Nude

Even before arriving at the Académie Julian, Garay had been exposed to the female nude in painting through the work of Gutierrez, whose scandalous nude La cazadora de los Andes (The Huntress of the Andes, 1874) (Img. 5) was the first nude in Mexican painting, although it had been exhibited in Bogotá, not in Mexico City. 17 Recalling academic nudes like Alexandre Cabanel’s La naissance de Venus (The Birth of Venus, 1863) (Img. 6) and others by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Gutierrez depicted an idealized, statuesque, and mythological nude in the guise of Diana, the goddess of the hunt, alongside her bows and animal pelt, and very much in keeping with the classicizing style of European and US painting, including John Vanderlyn’s Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos (1809-1814), the first nude painting in the US. Interestingly, Gutierrez chose to place this figure from Roman mythology against the backdrop of an Andean landscape, although this location is referenced only by the title.

Image 5
Felipe Santiago Gutiérrez, The Huntress of the Andes, 1874.

Oil on canvas, 38.5 × 60.6 in. (98 × 154 cm.)

Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City.

Image 6
Alexander Cabanel, The Birth of Venus, 1863.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

As Gutierrez’s protégé, Garay naturally enrolled in Bougereau’s atelier at the Académie Julian, further reinforcing the tradition of the academic nude. Other Colombian artists, like Pedro Carlos Manrique, who was also enrolled there from 1882 to 1886, mentioned the study of “the nude and of composition, guided by eminent masters,” as one of the big attractions of this studio. 18 Colombian artist Francisco Antonio Cano, who was enrolled there from 1898 to 1899, visually documented this tradition both in his travel notebook and in his painting Modelo de la Academia Julian (Model of the Académie Julian, 1898) (Img. 7). 19 The study from live models, together with the inexpensive fees, convenient locations, and lack of an entrance examination, made the Académie Julian a destination for artists from Colombia and other Latin American countries, and from the US, and elsewhere, several of whom were women. 20

Image 7
Francisco A. Cano. Model of the Académie Julian 1898.

Oil on canvas 61 × 51 cm.

Colecciónde Arte, Banco de la República, Colombia.

Garay painted and exhibited La mujer del levita in 1899, fourteen years after his return from Paris and towards the end of his tenure at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes. A biblical painting, similar in style and subject matter to Gutierrez’s, Garay treaded carefully in his depiction of the female nude. In spite of the religious context, the issue of nudity created such controversy that the canvas was exhibited separately from other works of art and, as noted in a local newspaper, the public was discouraged from entering and warned about the painting’s immorality. 21

In addition to these warnings and inconvenient placement in a separate room, La mujer del levita also called attention to itself because of the manner in which the female nude was represented. Described as stiff, cold, awkward, and literally dead, Garay’s approach to the woman’s body struck viewers in more than one way. Colombian art critic Jacinto Albarracín described the depicted figure as a cadaver recalling the smell “of bodies in decomposition.” 22 By deviating from the idealized nude practiced by Gutierrez and Bouguereau, and choosing to depict an obscure Old Testament narrative about an unfaithful woman who was raped and abused by thieves before being returned to her husband’s doorstep, Garay further incited controversy.

The fact that critics objected not just to the obvious nudity, but to the lack of idealization in the figure, evidenced in its lifelessness and stressed by the macabre narrative, reveals the extent to which the question of morality in art was not a binary concept, but rather a fluid and relative one, by which a painting like Garay’s could be regarded as intolerable while Gutierrez’s Cazadora de los Andes may have garnered some acceptance. By calling attention to her lifelessness Albarracín deprived the female nude of her “universality,” and in so doing transformed her into a “real” woman, associated not with art, but with reality. 23 In questioning her aesthetics (appearance) and legitimacy (narrative), critics redefined her not as a “nude,” 24 meaning a woman who is disinterested in her nakedness and “clothed in art,” 25 but rather, and more problematically, as a “naked woman.”

Moreover, there was a rumor that the nude had been based on a photograph. This accusation was first made by the critic Max Grillo, who on October 4, 1899, wrote in El Autonomista:

I avoided, for example, writing down the many defects found in [Garay’s] canvas, [...] and in order to spare myself the shame of proclaiming that it was taken from a photograph (which I have held in my hands) I prefer not to mention this painting. [...] Telling a painter that he copied a nude from a photograph is like proving to a poet that he plagiarized a poem word for word. Laziness is never an excuse in works of art. 26

While the woman’s nudity in the painting challenged social propriety and religious morality, Grillo’s accusation both hinted at the use of pornography and questioned the artist’s professionalism. A common practice among French artists like Gustave Courbet and US artists like Thomas Eakins, nude photographs, whether academic or pornographic, were often regarded as a tool of the trade. 27 Unable to verify Grillo’s claim, one can only speculate, although it is worth noting that the mere insinuation of pornography would on its own have been scandalous.

Grillo’s accusation also touched on another important value of La Regeneración, professionalism. Indeed, the core of his critique is that Garay should have painted from a live model, rather than from a photograph, not only because an artist can better capture the realism of the human body when drawing from the flesh, but also because it would have reflected international artistic standards, through which he would have exemplified Colombia’s “cosmopolitanism.” 28 The fact that the response to Garay’s painting hinged on the question of the nudity or nakedness of the figure begs further discussion. A point worth noting in this regard is that Garay’s figure lacked pubic hair, following what T. J. Clark describes as an “(academic) artistic convention that distinguished nakedness from nudity.” 29 This further validates the point made by Garay, but missed by critics entirely, that his painting was an academic, rather than a pornographic nude, and that indeed it was a nude and not a naked woman.

While the cosmopolitanism, or “cultural sameness” of Garay’s presidential portraits had not caused a stir, the female nude in La mujer del levita clearly complicated matters and touched on a sensitive moral nerve in Colombia. Knowing Núñez personally, Garay surely anticipated the extent to which the presence of a female nude would challenge religious conventions and artistic sensibilities, and in fact he painted no other nudes before or after this canvas. Nonetheless, he may have expected the biblical framework to assuage the critics, in which case his assumption was proven wrong: as this one painting proved, subject matter was not the only determining factor.

Three days after Grillo’s accusations were published, and in the same newspaper, Garay published a response in defense of his reputation, referring to the cosmopolitan practice of the academic nude and his own internationalism, 30 which he substantiated by citing his successful exhibitions in Paris at the Académie Julian and the Salon of 1886, where he had exhibited a painting titled Recreación (Recreation) (Img. 8). 31 In fact, the success of Garay’s painting in Paris had been the source of great pride in Bogotá, where it was discussed in serial publications like Alberto Urdaneta’s Papel Periódico Ilustrado and Cano’s Lectura y Arte. 32 At the time, one critic had noted that the woman’s cleavage in Recreación was “not provocative,” and argued that, since the woman was not in the nude, her modesty could be applauded as “a natural consequence of the frankness of her joy and the purity of her heart.” 33 Words like “modesty” and “purity” were common in the artistic discourse of La Regeneración, demonstrating the extent to which tensions between nudity and nakedness, academic art and pornography, were fluid and relative, but above all, timely.

Image 8
Reproduction of Garay’s Recreation, 1886

In Lectura y Arte, 1903, Vol, 1, n.° 4 & 5

La Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango Library, Bogotá.

Painting from a Live Model

Prior to exhibiting La mujer del levita Garay had already experienced the scorn of La Regeneración when he had introduced the practice of live modeling to the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in Bogotá. Since the 1886 Constitution increased the influence of government and religion over education, Garay, then Director, was subject to censorship by the President of the Universidad Nacional, Liberio Zerda. In a letter dated April 4, 1894 (Img. 9), Zerda warned Garay of the controversial nature of the practice of drawing from a live model:

On numerous occasions I have warned you [...] verbally that the use of models taken from women in the flesh is prohibited in this school, and for the classes in Painting and Sculpture, as this practice goes against the morals and customs of our society. Nevertheless, the bills for these models have continued to be submitted, and from this moment on I advise you that this Ministry will not recognize services of that nature. 34

image 9
Letter from Liberio Zerda to Epifanio Garay, April 4 th 1896
Archives of the Escuela de BellasArtes, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá.

This statement touches upon the “immorality” and “unlawfulness” of using and paying for live models, and responds to Garay’s insistence on upholding that practice, which he regarded as integral to the development of any art school or national artistic tradition. 35 Other administrators and critics reacted similarly, including again Albarracín, who described it as “scandalous in the puritanical society of the capital city.” 36 The nature, tone, and language of the secriticisms of nude painting as a genre and of the practice of drawing from the nude demonstrate the extent to which religion exerted a considerable influence on artistic production during La Regeneración, and particularly the way in which religious conservatism yielded provincial ideologies.

The nude model, once a reflection of the cosmopolitanism that Núñez had desired for the Republic of Colombia and its first art academy, took on a very different meaning once it was put into practice, and Colombian administrators, critics, and writers quickly and loudly proclaimed their disapproval. This discrepancy between idea and practice signaled the extent to which “the ‘moral question’ prevailed more in Colombia than in other nations,” as historian Hayley Froysland put it, “principally because of the unique and continued strength of the Catholic Church and its strong alliance with the Conservative Party as well as the concomitant intensity of the belief in hierarchy and the perception of society as a social organism.” 37 Thus the 1887 Concordat, together with the conservative policies of La Regeneración, created not only a provincial and hermetic mentality that quickly erased all traces of cosmopolitanism, but also led to dee pruptures in the political landscape.

In permeating all levels of society including social, moral, political, and artistic, the subject of religion not only made the exhibition of the female nude and the practice of live modeling a serious moral affront, but forever altered the development of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, which for the remainder of the 19th century and during the early decades of the 20th century would remain a bastion of conservative academic painting, delaying, deterring, and in many ways stunting the growth of modern art in Colombia.

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Notes