Guillermo Collazo Tejeda was born in Havana on June 7, 1850, and died in Paris while still young, on September 26, 1896. He belonged to a family of patriots, many of whose members actively participated in the Ten Years’ War and other insurrectionary movements, among them his brother Enrique Collazo, who rose to the rank of General in the Liberation Army. When he was 17 years old, in 1868, he was in Santiago de Cuba, and, after the execution of one of his cousins, his parents arranged for him to board a schooner to the United States.

Little is known about the period of his life spent in the United States, although it is known that he attended classes in New York, in the studio of the painter Sarony. He had an apartment on Victor Hugo Street, where he displayed superb works of art. It also served as a conspiratorial center, attended by leading figures who supported the independence movement from their exiles and coordinated expeditions loaded with weapons, ammunition, and other war supplies.

Upon his return to Cuba, he had already achieved notoriety among the highest echelons of society, and his work was in high demand. He had connections with other artists, such as Cabanel, Durand, Calorús, and Bonnat, as well as writers, including the distinguished poet Julián del Casal, who wrote several texts that allow us to delve into Guillermo Collazo’s pictorial universe and the exquisiteness of his artistic work.

His work focused primarily on portraiture and the brushwork of emotive landscapes. Many Havana women posed for the artist, who captured contemplative attitudes, young women reclining on divans, pensive ladies in the purest nineteenth-century style, patios decorated with colorful plants, and, in general, works of a preciousness that sometimes bordered on excessive, but that did not detract from his romantic and deeply Cuban influence.

Among his emblematic portraits are those of Mrs. Malpica and Mrs. Emelina Collazo de Ferrán, both painted before his departure for France. French painting also had a powerful influence on his work, but he favored a distinctively Creole style of work, authentic in its expressions. As Casal said, “Everything that flows from his brush is refined, exquisite, exquisite.”