American Monotypes from the Baker/Pisano Collection | Page 47

F. Luis Mora (American, b. Uruguay, 1874–1940)
Spanish Man Lighting a Cigarette, 1909

Monotype, 7 1/2 x 3 5/8 in.
Collection of The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, New York. Gift of
the Baker/Pisano Collection, 2001.9.173

Born into a wealthy family in Uruguay, F. Luis Mora lived in
Catalonia, Spain, as a child before his family immigrated to the
United States in 1880. From an early age, Mora showed great
promise as an artist and his sculptor father sent him to study
under American Impressionists Frank Weston Benson and
Edmund Tarbell at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston. In 1892, he came to New York to study at the Art
Students League where one of his classmates was Georgia
O’Keeffe and it is likely there that he took up the art of making
monotypes. Spanish Man Lighting a Cigarette was done in
Seville, on Mora’s second extended trip to Spain. He went on
to have a noted career as a prominent artist and teacher, and
certainly a highlight was being award a gold medal at the
Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915.
NOTES:
Baron, F. Luis Mora, 32–66.
Boone, Vistas de Espana, 191–197.

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