Credit: (Public Domain)
Juan Manuel Blanes (June 8, 1830 – April 15, 1901) was a noted Uruguayan painter of the Realist school. He was born in Montevideo, in 1830 and was raised by his mother, with whom he relocated to the countryside in his early teens. Blanes took an interest in drawing at this point, and shortly afterwards, was hired as an illustrator for a Montevideo newsdaily, El Defensor de la Independencia Americana. Earning extra income with watercolors, he returned to his mother and, in 1854, established his first atelier.