Our Daily Bread (El Pan Nuestro de Cada Dia) by Ramón Frade (Interpretation and Analysis)

El Pan Nuestro de Cada Dia
Source: Pintrest

Today I want to take a step back from Romanticism to talk about a little known Puerto Rican (little known outside of Puerto Rico, at least) artist, Ramón Frade. Frade can be characterized as a realist, both in terms of his style and subject matter. As an artistic style, realism strives to depict reality. The movement, which emerged in the 19th century, can be understood as a reaction against the fantastical and other-worldly splendor of Romantic painting. Instead, Realism celebrated the lives of everyday people.

El Pan Nuestro de Cada Dia, which is Frade’s most famous painting, is a good example of this idea. The piece depicts an old man, walking shoeless across mountainous country, with a tilled field in the background. He carries a bunch of plantains, the “daily bread” of the painting’s title. Frade’s depiction of the farmer is sympathetic; he carries himself with pride, representing the dignity of work and the importance of agriculture to Puerto Rico. The plantain, a cheap and easy to grow food that was widely accessible to working people, is a marker the struggle to survive facing the jíbaros (mountain people living off the land). Here, Frade tries to encapsulate an idealized version of the working man and his perseverance in the face of hardship.

The painting can also be read as a criticism of American rule over Puerto Rico. Based on my research, in the early twentieth century, high property taxes imposed by the Hollander Act forced many small and subsistence farmers to sell their land or face severe economic hardship. Small time farmers were also crippled by the high cost of financing their operations, as opposed to large, American companies who received low interest rates from Wall Street banks. The result was a shift from an economy in which agricultural workers owned and profited from their own land to a system in which the same laborers worked for large sugar plantations that passed virtually none of their profits on to the workers, an economic legacy that had disastrous long term consequences for the island.

Frade’s painting calls upon the government to support the everyday people of the island and defend the economic independence of small farmers.

Disclaimer: I’m not an art historian or an expert on this topic. The above is my opinion, based on my interpretation of my foreknowledge of art and history. If I’ve done any additional research, I’ll note it above.