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Mora's popularity suffered during the Great Depression, with the decline of portrait commissions and magazine illustrations, and he faded further from the limelight when the abstract style became the vogue after World War II.
A recent surge in interest about Mora and his vibrant works has been spurred by a 2006 exhibit at ACA Galleries in Manhattan and the dedication to preserving the artist's legacy shown by relatives who are part of the extended Bacardi rum family, to whom Mora was related through his aunts' marriages.
According to Ms. Roznoy, Mora's work remains compelling only in part because of his luscious colors, brilliant technique and range of subject material, which includes portraits of dancer Isadora Duncan, President Warren G. Harding and Andrew Carnegie, along with a series of works featuring Broadway actress Jeanne Cartier, who shimmers in an orange dress and purple tights.
It is the artist's progression-his transition from classicism to impressionism to realism, mirroring the evolution of the art world-and his enduring connection to his Hispanic roots that warrants continued patronage.
The Mora family immigrated to America when he was 6 years old in 1880, bouncing between New Jersey and Boston and finally settling in the former. Mora revealed an artistic command strikingly early, and was one of the youngest students to train at the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston. He went on to study at the Art Students League in New York and teach budding pupils, including Georgia O'Keeffe, at the League and at the Chase School of Art, now the Parsons New School for Design.
As much as Mora was an American, naturalized in 1903, his travel to Spain led to the integration of Old Master techniques into Mora's early classical work. Ms. Roznoy explains that the subjects or the details in the backgrounds he chose were frequently elements of traditional Hispanic art, such as a Spanish shawl lying on a chair in the background of a scene.
"The shawl became an icon," she said. "He was saying, 'I'm proud of this. It has beauty in itself.'"
In fact, Mora's presentation painting when he was recognized as a member of the National Academy of Design, the first Hispanic to be accepted, was a reworking of an 1896 piece modeled after Velazquez's studies of Spanish beggars.
"It was a very overt, planned gesture," Ms. Roznoy said. "He made a sincere effort to include his heritage in his art."
Mora began visiting Connecticut with New York City artists and friends who congregated at the colony in Old Lyme. He soon found himself at odds with their artistic approach and ventured northwest, along the Housatonic River. In 1910, he and his wife, Sophia, discovered a 28-acre plot of land just up the road from New Milford where a Mrs. Gaylord was breaking up her family's farm. Mora took 10 years to build his country home, often summering in a tent on the property. He died in 1940.
The exhibit includes several pieces from this period of the artist's life, when his canvases recorded garden scenes in Gaylordsville as well as explorations into the urban scenes from New York City in the style of the Ash Can School. Mora helped foster Litchfield County's art colony as a founding member of the Kent Art Association in 1923.
"He really [was] accomplished in many spheres," said Ms. Roznoy.
To assemble a true retrospective show, the Mattatuck Museum drew pieces from museums such as the Yale University Art Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Butler Institute of American Art and the Newark Museum in addition to private collections. The exhibit runs from Sept. 26 to Feb. 7. It opens with a reception Sept. 25, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. For more information, visit the Web site at www.mattatuckmuseum.org.
