Life
Having studied art in his native city of Barcelona, Spain, Munras immigrated to the United States as a young man, ultimately making his home in Monterey.
Munras was a dealer in cattle hides and tallow, the products of his Rancho San Vicente. He built Casa Munras, the first home to be constructed outside the walls of the El Presidio Reál de San Carlos de Monterey, where he established a thriving trading house attached to the family home. Munras imported fine household furnishings and necessities to the earliest settlers in Monterey, California's first capital. His wife, Catalina Manzanelli de Munras, was grantee of Rancho Laguna Seca and Rancho San Francisquito.
At the request of mission priest Father Juan Cabot, also a native of Barcelona, Munras traveled to Mission San Miguel Arcángel, north of Paso Robles, in the early 1820s. Various religious-themed scenes (known as the "Munras murals") were painted by the local Salinan Indians under Munras' direction. His designs reflected the Neo-Classical tastes of the period, and the reredos (main altarpiece) reflects knowledge of an artist who had seen the fashionably decorated churches in Mexico of that era. The interior has remained untouched and has been preserved in its original state.
Munras died in 1850 in Monterey.
Read more about this topic: Esteban Munras
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“When once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“Silent waters rocking on the morning of our birth,
like an empty cradle waiting to be filled.
And from the heart of God the Spirit moved upon the earth,
like a mother breathing life into her child.”
—Gordon Light (20th century)