Collection: Agustín Arrieta

José Agustín Arrieta (29 August 1803 – 22 December 1874) was a Mexican genre and still life painter active in Puebla, where he spent most of his life. Trained in the costumbrista tradition, he documented the daily life and gastronomy of nineteenth-century Mexico through oil paintings executed in a realist manner with tenebrist undercurrents.

Arrieta’s genre scenes depict Puebla’s urban interiors, markets, and domestic spaces with meticulous attention to local dress, utensils, and social rituals. His still lifes, often termed bodegones, elevate Mexican culinary staples (moles, fruits, pulque vessels) into formal compositions, balancing naturalistic detail with chiaroscuro.

The works "Self-Portrait" (1878) and "Remembrance of Italy" (c. 1866) reveal his engagement with European portraiture and landscape conventions, though his primary subject remained regional.