24 Facts About Francisco Oller

Francisco Manuel Oller y Cestero was a Puerto Rican painter, the only Latin American painter to have played a role in the development of Impressionism.

One of the most distinguished transatlantic painters of his day, Oller helped transform painting in the Caribbean.

Francisco Manuel Oller y Cestero was born in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, the third of four children of aristocratic and wealthy Spanish parents Cayetano Juan Oller y Fromesta and Maria del Carmen Cestero Davila.

However, the offer was not accepted as Francisco Oller's mother felt that he was too young to travel abroad alone.

When Francisco Oller was eighteen, he moved to Madrid, Spain, where he studied painting at the Royal Academy of San Fernando, under the tutelage of Don Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz, director of the Prado Museum.

Francisco Oller frequently visited cafes where he met with fellow artists.

Francisco Oller became a friend of fellow Puerto Ricans Ramon Emeterio Betances y Alacan and Salvador Carbonell del Toro, who were expatriates in France because of their political beliefs.

In 1859, Francisco Oller exhibited some of his artistic works next to those of Bazille, Renoir, Monet, and Sisley.

Francisco Oller's paintings were a big contribution of history during this time.

Francisco Oller's world was not only the cultivated, Europeanized milieus of the Puerto Rican bourgeoisie, but the realities of the relatively small city of San Juan, where he was born and where most of his career developed.

Francisco Oller's familiarity with the different strata of society on the Caribbean island of his birth was a constant reality as he intermingled with Realist and Impressionist artists and others who constituted his world on the other side of the Atlantic.

Francisco Oller was a person of multiple cultural affinities, which allowed him to embrace what he saw abroad, but to interiorize and reformulate those elements for purposes that conformed to his vision of tropical reality.

Francisco Oller spent nearly two decades in Europe working alongside the pioneers of Impressionism, and, through his travels, participated in a vibrant exchange of aesthetic ideas, forging his own brand of international modernism while engaging social issues unique to the Caribbean.

In 1871, Spain honored Oller by naming him a member of the Caballeros de la Orden de Carlos III, and a year later he became the official painter of the Royal Court of Amadeo I Oller developed an interest in bringing out the reality of Puerto Rico's landscape, its people, and culture through his works of art.

Francisco Oller died on May 17,1917, in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Francisco Oller was buried at the Santa Maria Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Francisco Oller was a prolific painter with works ranging in topic from still-lifes and landscapes to historical events and portraiture.

Francisco Oller's painting style provided a historical context for his painting, providing a cultural view through his own lens.

Francisco Oller was involved with many art movements from the realist art movement, the naturalist art movement, and the impressionist art movement of which he is best known for.

Francisco Oller was influenced by Barbizon school painter Jean-Francois Millet to paint in this way, allowing him to provide a realistic depiction of the life of Puerto Ricans in their historical context.

Francisco Oller was compared to Campeche as one of the most prominent artists in his country's history.

Francisco Oller was responsible for bringing Realism and Impressionism to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Francisco Oller helped bring outside world events by drawing them and displaying them publicly.

Many Puerto Rican artists have followed in Francisco Oller's footsteps, including Ramon Frade and Miguel Pou.