From Emperors to Hoi Polloi: Portraits of an Era, 1851–1945

Drawing, Zapoteca Girl from Mitla, c. 1921   
Winold Reiss (American, 1886–1953)
Mexico
Graphite, watercolor, gouache on paper
55 x 38 1/2 inches (140 x 97 centimeters)
Credit: The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection, The Wolfsonian–Florida International University, Miami Beach
86.5.31
Photo: Silvia Ros

Ordinary people fascinated Winold Reiss, a German émigré to the United States. During his lifetime Reiss drew more than five hundred portraits of American minorities: Chinese Americans and "Harlem types" in New York; Blackfeet Indians in Browning, Montana; and Zapoteca Indians in Mexico. This drawing was made during a trip through Mexico in 1921. It is inscribed on the reverse "Zapoteca Girl from Mitla." Mitla, a town near present-day Oaxaca, Mexico, was the site of an ancient Mayan city.

Reiss's portraits are "types" in that he chose subjects whose physiognomy he considered representative (or even ideal) expressions of particular ethnic groups. Yet his careful attention to detail documents a beauty and dignity that is sensitive to the individual. 

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