Toda la pintura rosa y azul - Flores Mexicanas, by Alfredo Ramos Martínez, 1915-29

 

Kept in the artist's studio and worked on sporadically for fourteen years, this very large - nine by twelve feet - and odd painting - both frilly and crude - was, in 1929, a wedding present from the president of Mexico to Charles and Anne Lindbergh; her father was then the United States ambassador to Mexico. The gift was probably not to the Lindberghs' taste, as they never hung it and only three years later presented it to the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis, where it languished, forgotten, in a store room until 2014. With its display at the Dallas Art Museum in 2020, it had its first public showing in almost a century.

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Three other "pink and blue" paintings by Ramos Martínez.

Damas en un paisaje, circa 1905.

La Fête champêtre, circa 1905.

Manolas en un paisaje, 1921.

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Alfredo Ramos Martínez (12 November 1871, Monterrey - 8 November 1946, Los Angeles), Mexican painter, muralist, and educator, best known for his paintings of Mexican peasants and genre scenes; as the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío - a close friend of the artist - wrote, "Ramos Martínez is one of those who paints poems; he does not copy, he interprets; he understands how to express the sorrow of the fisherman and the melancholy of the village." The son of a successful merchant, from an early age he was recognized as having artistic talent. Visiting Mexico, the American philanthropist Phoebe Hearst became his first great patron, buying up his existing work and funding his travel to Paris for further study. He arrived in the French capital in 1900 and, aided by his fluent French, quickly became acquainted with the leading artistic and literary figures of the day. He went on to win a gold medal at the Salon d'Automne in 1906, but he returned to Mexico in 1910. In the midst of the Mexican Revolution, in 1913 he was named director of the National Academy; the next year he stepped down to devote his energies to his "Open Air Schools", but in 1920 was reinstated. He married in 1928. The couple's daughter, born the following year, suffered from a bone disease, and they first sought treatment for her at the Mayo Clinic, eventually settling in the milder climate of Los Angeles. There, his work proved very popular with collectors in the film industry. He also completed several important murals in the area - some of which have survived - before his unexpected death at the age of seventy-four.