Juan Rodriguez Juarez. Jose Agustin Arrieta was a Mexican genre painter or costumbrista painter known for his scenes of everyday life in nineteenth-century Puebla, the city in which he lived most of his life.
He was most prolific, however, as a still life painter, depicting many typical Mexican foods and dishes. The son of Tomas Arrieta, of Basque origin, and of Rita Maria Fernandez, Agustin Arrieta was brought as a young boy to the city of Puebla, where he lived for the rest of his life.
There is little documentary evidence of this assertion, except for his certificate of marriage to Maria Nicolasa Lorenzana Varela, dated 29 August 1826, and documents that demonstrate his membership in and participation in competitions of the Academy of Fine Arts in Puebla and the Academy of San Carlos. His time as a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Puebla coincided with the presence of the professors Lorenzo Zendejas, Salvador del Huerto, Lopez Guerrero, and the brothers Caro and Jose Manzo.
Although he was a member of the Academy, he decided to establish his own workshop, where he began to paint genre scenes and other subjects incomprehensible to the elitist clientele of the city of Puebla, from whom he received only modest sums for his works. Neither did the recognition conferred on him by the painters of Puebla in the Guia de Forasteros of 1852 improve his economic circumstances.
Indeed, in order to suppor