Joaquín Cuadras

Who was Joaquín Cuadras?

Joaquín Cuadras was a Cuban painter.

In 1861 Cuadras met fellow artist Walter Goodman whilst copying Old Master paintings at the Uffizi palace in Florence and the two became friends. They travelled to Barcelona in 1862 and arrived in London a year later.

In 1864 he sat for Walter Goodman's mother, the portrait painter Julia Goodman. Later that year he travelled to Cuba with Walter Goodman.

After returning from Cuba in 1870, Cuadras moved to Selkirk in Scotland for three years where he found work decorating mansions for the Scottish elite. One of his most important commissions was a series of eight panel pictures illustrating Sir Walter Scott's The Lay of the Last Minstrel.

Many of his best works were exhibited at galleries in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Cuadras was represented at the Royal Academy in 1872 by his painting Mulatto Girl's Toilette, a Scene in Cuba and the following year he contributed two engravings The Cuban Lovers and The Mulatto Girl to The Graphic magazine. In 1874 he exhibited Return the Christening a painting of a scene in Venice with a christening party landing from a gondola at International Exhibition of Fine Arts in London. This painting is currently in the collection of The General Hospital, Jersey.