Clavé, Pelegrín (1811–1880)

Pelegrín Clavé (b. 17 June 1811; d. 13 September 1880), painter. Trained in his native Barcelona and in Rome, Clavé was in Mexico between 1846 and 1867 as director of the reestablished Academia de San Carlos. In Rome he studied with Tommaso Minardi and, like the sculptor Manuel Vilar, he was sympathetic to the Nazarenes (a group of German artists who sought to revitalize Christian art). While in Mexico he executed many portraits reminiscent of those of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, with which he must have become familiar in Rome; these are considered his most significant work. With his pupils Clavé decorated the interior of the dome of the church of the Profesa (1860–1867; destroyed by fire in 1914). He was instrumental in the formation of the collection of colonial paintings in the galleries of the Academia de San Carlos. Political difficulties led Clavé to return to Barcelona in 1868. There he lectured and wrote about Mexican painting, and worked on plans to decorate the dome of the church of the Merced.

See alsoArt: The Nineteenth Century .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Salvador Moreno, El pintor Pelegrín Clavé (1966).

Additional Bibliography

Camacho Becerra, Arturo. Pelegrín Clavé. Zapopan: Colegio de Jalisco [Barcelona]: Generalitat de Catalunya, 1998.

Hernandez-Duran, Raymond. "Reframing Viceregal Painting in Nineteenth-century Mexico: Politics, the Academy of San Carlos, and Colonial Art History." Ph.D. diss., 2005.

                                 Clara Bargellini