The Velázquez Exhibition

During a trip to London in 1912 or 1913, shortly after graduationg from Madrid’s Royal Academy of San Fernando, Moya del Pino was surprised by the success of an exhibition of of low quality carbon photographs of Velázquez’s paintings. How could viewers be so enthusiastic about this show, when it was no more than a shadow of the original works by the master?

An idea started forming in his head: to make a complete copy of the works by Velázquez in the Prado Museum and to organize an itinerant expedition to show the collection in foreign countries. A few years later, he decided to put it into practice: he presented his idea to the Duke of Berwick and Alba, an influential patron of the arts, who presented it to the King Alfonso XIII — and the King enthusiastically embraced it. Travel to Spain had plummeted due to the 1918 influenza pandemic that many foreigners thought had started in that country (it was known in the US as “the Spanish flu”); the King, hoping to revive the economy, had become a great promoter of tourism, and a “cultural mission” to introduce other nations to Spain’s artistic masterpieces seemed like a worthwhile effort to help foster travel to the country.

José Moya del Pino was committed to duplicating the originals to their exact measurements, and to grind the pigments and hand-mix the colors according to 17th century specifications. This, as the artist stated later in an article in the Philadelphia Forum of April 1925, “required an extensive preparation and a slow and careful study of the processes followed by Velasquez, in respect to both color and manner of composing. For two years I did nothing else but imbue my mind with the work of the most glorious of our painters. Afterwards, I began the scrupulous reproduction of the paintings, and to this task I devoted myself for four years.”

When ready, the copies were exhibited at the Salon de Otoño in Madrid. An article in El Imparcial from October 12 1924 commented on the exhibit: “The work of Mr. Moya del Pino was justly appreciated. It well deserves it, for the magnitude of the effort and for the quality of the results. Foreigners will receive, to a large extent, the closest sensation to that experienced before the canvases of the immortal Don Diego.”

Moya del Pino copying the works of Velasquez in the Prado Museum

The original intent was to tour Europe, but as Spain’s international efforts turned to strengthening relations with other Spanish-speaking countries, the goal switched to the Americas. The recently appointed US Ambassador to Spain, Alexander Moore, facilitated contacts with museus in the United States and so it was decided to start from there and then continue to Central and South America. In reality, most of the Latin countries contacted were not able to provide the appropriate premises or supply funds for an exhibition of this size: 43 paintings, some of them of enormous size (Las Meninas is almost 10x10 feet). But this was not known yet when the exhibition boarded the ship for the United States.

Cover of the guide to the exhibition

The Exhibition was inaugurated at the Philadelphia Art Alliance on March 26, 1925, and ran through April 12; An article in The Philadelphia Forum explained it like this: “The purpose of the exhibition is to bind closer the ties between Spain and the United States by

making us better acquainted with the glorious masterpieces of Spain’s greatest painter. It was impossible, of course, to remove the Prado Museum to America, and quite as impossible to bring the Velásquez originals. The alternative was to make exact and perfect reproductions, and this is what Moya del Pino, working steadily for four years, has done. In spite of his youth he is one of the foremost painters in Europe, and the greatest living authority on Velásquez. The reproductions are so very like the originals that only a Velásquez expert can tell the difference. (…) Next to a visit to Madrid, a visit to Moya del Pino’s reproductions is the best method of studying Velásquez.”

The next stop was the Brooklyn Museum in New York, where Exhibiciones Velázquez opened on May 17; following that it continued to the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, and then to the newly inaugurated west wing of the M.H. De Young Memorial Museum in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The exhibition at the De Young ran from July to end of

December, and the number of viewers over the first 6 weeks was estimated at over half a million (San Francisco Chronicle, September 14, 1925); but it was unclear what to do after that show ended. The expected stops in central and south America fell through, and the funds provided by the Crown had been depleted. Moreover, the organizers had expected that a good part of the cost of the tour would be financed by ticket sales, unaware that in the United States at that time museums were free and therefore Exhibiciones Velázquez wasn’t able to charge admission.

The Consul General of Spain attends the exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum

Spain was having its own financial troubles and facing increasing civil unrest, and nobody responded to the appeals for help. The country was still in the middle of the Moroccan (Rif) war; the king was losing favor and soon had to leave Spain for an exile from which he would not return; and social revolution fermented in Catalonia. The economic growth that the country had experienced in the first couple of years of General Miguel Primo de Rivera’s reforms was beginning to slow down, and his regime was under criticism. The fate of the copies of Velásquez in America was low on the list of priorities.

The paintings were so large it was too expensive to ship them back to Spain or to put them into a storage facility. A committee headed by San Francisco Archbishop Edward J. Hanna and the Consul General of Spain José Gimeno had the idea to raise funds from donors and members of the local Hispanic community to acquire the collection and donate it to the University of

California at Berkeley. The paintings were installed in the East Reading Room of the university’s Doe Library in early 1926; the expected funds, however, were never raised, and Exhibiciones Velázquez never received payment for them.

Article in the San Francisco Examiner, 7/17/1925

The Oakland Tribune announces the donation of the Velazquez copies to UC Berkeley

In 1959, more than 20 years later, a profound renovation of the library was undertaken. To improve lighting a drop ceiling was installed at a lower height than the original one, so that the paintings no longer fit on the upper walls; the only available alternative was to deliver them to the University Museum, which for lack of exhibit space locked the collection in a warehouse. The drop ceiling was removed again in 1969 and the original coffered ceiling uncovered. The administration considered re-installing the paintings, but decided against it because they were not originals.

At this point it appears that the university lost control of the collection. Most of the paintings went into storage in the basement of the university’s gym, while some of the smaller ones were placed on the walls of the Spanish department. After Moya del Pino passed away, his heirs requested to have the paintings returned if the university was not interested in exhibiting them; but when the time came to collect the copies, several of them couldn’t be found. Some may have been sold

without the family’s knowledge; some may have been stolen, as they had wheels affixed to the frames to facilitate moving them in and out of storage. Among the paintings that were never recovered was Las Meninas.

At present day we only know the location of eight of the 43 paintings that came across the ocean in 1925 (41 copies of Velázquez plus a portrait of King Alfonso XIII and a portrait of the Duke of Alba).

In 2016, two of the paintings that had been auctioned in 1977 were donated to us. They are La Fragua de Vulcano (Vulcan’s Forge) and La Rendición de Breda (Surrender at Breda, also known as The Spears). Read about their long history and travels in Rediscovering the Moya Velazquez Paintings. They are damaged but not beyond rescue, and we hope some day to have the means to have them restored and to find a suitable place to have them displayed to the public.

La Fragua de Vulcano, donated back to Moya-RHS