Cuban Colonial Prints

Abstract

The collector and independent scholar Emilio Cueto provides a historical inventory of seventeen graphic art images depicting Cuba, printed during the late Spanish colonial period (1762–1898). These images—primarily authored by Dutch, English, French, and German, not Spanish or Cuban artists—became the most widely circulated visual representations of the island, particularly the capital of Havana. Despite their fanciful and often inaccurate character, these prints depicted the landscape, architecture, people, and customs of the island. They became part of a well-known visual repertoire that fixed Cuba as an exotic tropical location in the global imagination. As Cueto underlines, “It was through engravings and lithographs that Cuba first became known both inside the island and abroad. Colonial Cuba was defined by its prints.”