Felipe Santiago Gutiérrez

Felipe Santiago Gutiérrez (Texcoco, 1824 - there, 1904) was a Mexican painter of the second half of the nineteenth century. Trained at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City, he worked on historical and religious subjects, portraits and female nudes, and his exhibitions in Mexico and abroad place him among Mexican artists of his time with an international reach.

Born in Texcoco, he lost his father at eleven, and his mother moved the family to Mexico City. In 1836 he began formal studies at the Academy of San Carlos under Pelegrín Clavé, who introduced him to the Nazarene movement. Early works such as The Oath of Brutus (1857) used episodes from ancient Rome to allude to civic and patriotic questions of the Reform era.

Between 1848 and about 1858 he taught drawing and painting at the Instituto Literario in Toluca. He gained recognition for his compositions and for portraits, which were in high demand and gave him steady income. After travelling through the Bajío and other Mexican towns and visiting cities in the United States, he raised funds for a trip to Europe and settled for a time in Rome, where he expanded his range of female nudes.

In 1880 Rafael Pombo invited him to found the Academy of Fine Arts of Colombia. His works were shown in New Orleans, Philadelphia and Paris, and he held solo exhibitions in Bogotá, San Francisco and New York. His legacy includes works such as Indigenous Woman with Cempasúchil and Sofia Arboleda Mosquera de Urdaneta, now held in museums in Mexico, Colombia and the United States.