José Campeche, the 1797 British Attack on San Juan, and Portraiture in late Eighteenth-Century Puerto Rico

On April 17, 1797, sixty British warships were sighted off the coast of San Juan, Puerto Rico. After a day of waiting, the commander of the British troops, Sir Ralph Abercromby, sent a message to the Governor and Captain General of Puerto Rico, Don Ramón de Castro, requesting the surrender of the military stronghold. Castro, in turn, sent a note to Abercromby stating that he would defend San Juan and his sovereign, “to the last drop of blood.” The British proceeded to bombard the city, day and night, for fifteen days upon receipt of this response. On May 2, following several losses to the Spanish, Abercromby ordered the retreat of his forces and returned to England in defeat. Following the siege of the city, José Campeche (1751-1809), a prolific artist of African descent active in Puerto Rico during this time who also participated in the defense of the city as a member of the civilian militia, created several works to commemorate the event, the city, and its people. This paper considers Campeche's works as case studies of ways in which images, and specifically portraits, functioned to express, perform, and reinforce political, social, and religious ideologies in late eighteenth-century Puerto Rico. This paper argues that though they vary from one another in formal qualities and functions, these works can be considered together as individual components of a thriving image culture that emerged on the island during the era of reform under the Bourbon regime when the city underwent drastic changes.