Landscape painting became an artistic expression of a budding national identity in Cuba during the second half of the 19th century. A “Cuban style” of painting gradually emerged as the island experienced three wars of independence from Spain (1868–1898), the maturation of the sugar plantation economy and the abolition of slavery in 1886. The Romantic representation of the local physical environment as an allegory of Cubanness became a leading genre in the island’s painting. Emblematic features of the Cuban countryside, such as the royal palm, the peasant hut, and the small independent farmer, became engraved in landscape paintings between 1850 and 1920.
