Fortunato Arriola (1827–1872)[1] was a Mexican portraitist and landscape painter, of Spanish descent.[2] He is considered one of the pioneer artists of California,[3] and his work was popular in San Francisco, where he came to live in 1857.[4] Arriola primarily painted portraits, sunsets, and luminous tropical landscapes.
Early life and family
Sunset on the Sacramento River, 1869, Cantor Art Center, Stanford University
Fortunato Arriola was born in 1827, Cosalá, Sinaloa, Mexico.[5] The son of a wealthy Spanish landowner.[6] He was well versed in literature, and was a self-taught artist.[5] He began his career painting portraits.[7] Arriola admired the landscape paintings by Frederic Edwin Church.[8]
Career
His style was realistic, which he carried into his paintings of nature landscape scenes, for which he is most well-known. Contemporary critics especially praised Arriola’s paintings depicting moonlight and tropical scenes.[9] He had a studio near the corner of Kearney and Clay Streets in San Francisco,[10] that was a gathering place for Mexican exiles, a place of intellectual ferment, and the occasional brawl. Among his students were Toby Rosenthal and Ransom Holdredge.[10][11] Many of his works were of imagined views of Central America, and disappeared after he died. His largest painting, "Sunset in the Tropics", measures about 5 ft. by 7 ft. in its original frame.
He was returning from New York City to San Francisco on the commercial steamship Bienville (formerly USS Bienville), which was carrying a load of dynamite. It exploded on August 15, 1872 near Watling Island, Bahamas (now Bermuda). He is thought to have died at sea, leaving a widow and six children.[12][13] San Francisco artists from the San Francisco Art Association participated in a group exhibition to raise money for the surviving family, the effort was led by artist Edwin Deakin.[14][15][16] His daughter Herminia Arriola Gonzales (1857–1938), was also a noted painter.[2][17]
His work, "Moonlit River Gorge" sold at Bonhams Los Angeles in 2014 for $27,500 USD.[18] Arriola was covered in a podcast episode called "Fortunato Arriola - Wikicast 075" published in May 2020.[19]
In 2017–2018, his work was part of the group exhibition "California Mexicana: Missions to Murals, 1820–1930," at the Laguna Art Museum, curated by Katherine Manthorne and Alberto Nulman Magidin.[20]
^Marcus, Jacob Rader (1955). Memoirs of American Jews, 1775-1865. Jewish Publication Society of America. p. 149. Fortunato Arriola was descended from an old Spanish family. His grandfather had been sent to Mexico on some political mission and spent the rest of his life there.
