Mexican painter and art critic Felipe Santiago Gutiérrez (1824–1904) was born in the San Pablo neighborhood of Texcoco. At the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City, he studied under Miguel Mata and Pelegrín Clavé, whose conservative, academic influence accounts for biblical themes present in Gutiérrez’s early paintings. In 1852, he traveled to the Mexican interior for the first time, and was invited to head up the painting department at the Nicolaíta School in Morelia, Michoacán. Shortly after, Gutiérrez decided to return to the Academy of San Carlos for further education. As seen in Judgment of Brutus (1857), his canvases became dedicated to overtly republican themes as his liberal sympathies intensified. After his studies, Gutiérrez traveled extensively in Mexico, visiting Colima, Guadalajara, Tepic, San Blas, and Mazatlán. He also spent time in Bogotá, Colombia, and San Francisco, California, where he achieved renown as a painting teacher. He traveled to Paris, Madrid, and Rome, where he made his living painting portraits, and became acquainted with artists like Jusepe de Ribera, Eduardo Rosales Martínes, Mariano Fortuny y Marsal, and Gustave Courbet. In 1872, he moved to New York and established two studios. While Gutiérrez was a sensation abroad, he was especially treasured in his homeland; he was awarded the Medal of Artistic Merit from the Mexican government in 1898, and he died in 1904 in San Pablo, Texcoco.