Portrait battle is of historic proportions
Money and real estate can spark bitter fighting among descendants of famous people, but there’s a different kind of family battle looming in a San Antonio courtroom: dueling portraits.
José Miguel de Arciniega, an influential military explorer, legislator and landowner who served two stints as mayor of San Antonio in years preceding the 1836 Battle of the Alamo, didn’t have a painting done or photograph taken while he was living — at least, none that has survived.
Seeking to honor her ancestor, descendant Donna De León, president of the José Miguel Arciniega Descendants Society, invested at least $15,000 in researching the history of Arciniega, land commissioner for Stephen F. Austin’s colonies under the Mexican government in the 1830s.
De León asked her best friend’s husband, Houston artist David Baisden, who lives on her street, to created an image of Arciniega.
She said Baisden began with a digital composite based on existing images of the Tejano patriot’s
three sons, then produced airbrushed images and oil paintings.
The “official composite,” as approved by a vote of the society, was unveiled in 2013 and hangs at the state Capitol, in the Legislative Reference Library.
But another descendant, Norma Langwell, thought a portrait of higher quality could be produced to preserve the legacy of their ancestor.
She left the society and commissioned another portrait of Arciniega, hiring Houston forensic artist Lois Gibson, who created a pastel portrait with colored chalks on acid-free paper.
Now the two sides are headed to a jury trial, each insisting their composite is the more historically accurate portrait.
Dan Arellano, Tejano historian and member of the Bexar County Historical Commission, said he’s worried the case could affect historical scholarship and access to information used by artists to interpret the past.
The lawsuit accuses Langwell and Gibson of using “trade secret facial lintonio’s eage information” to create the Arciniega composite.
“It could set a precedent beyond belief,” Arellano said. “These people got two different artists to produce an image of what he looked like. But it’s just a guess.”
De León said her group simply wants Langwell to “stop interfering in our business.”
“We’re not doing anything to stop history,” De León said. “She needs to quit pulling ours down to put hers up. The only way to stop her is to go to court.”
Arciniega’s historical legacy includes ties to San An- most famous historic site.
Under Spanish rule, his father had been a soldier at the fort, then an old mission known as El Álamo, in the early 1800s. Arciniega himself later was the interpreter for Mexican Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos in negotiations for the surrender of Bexar in December 1835 that set the stage for the siege and battle at the Alamo three months later.
He knew Bowie, Juan Seguin and other Texas heroes, working with them in the republic’s early days.
His political career spanned 36 years, serving the governments of Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas and the United States. He was fluent in English, French, Spanish and several Native American dialects, negotiating numerous peace treaties.
In 2015, Arciniega’s contributions to Texas were recognized by Gov. Greg Abbott, the Legislature and the Texas Historical Commission, which unveiled a marker at the Arciniega House, located in the courtyard of the Marriott Plaza Hotel at 555 S. Alamo St.
His descendants agree more people need to know about Arciniega and his contributions to Texas and San Antonio history. But the battle of the dueling portraits is overshadowing those efforts.
After Langwell came out with her own composite, the society filed a lawsuit to stop her from using it.
The suit alleges Langwell “created division and animosity” within the society, then interfered with its efforts to have the Baisden version publicly displayed on city property and at the Capitol.
The suit accuses her of damaging the group’s reputation by promoting the Gibson version as a “family recognized portrait,” even though it is “not historically correct.”
The descendants’ group claims a loss of “contracts with organizations and descendants” that resulted in lost income because of Langwell’s use of an “alternative official composite” portrait to celebrate Arciniega’s role in history.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damage amounts, and a ruling that bars Langwell from selling or marketing “the infringing portrait,” which the society claims potentially could create public confusion about “which is the official trademarked portrait.”
Langwell said the descendants’ society similarly attempted to have Gibson’s portrait of Arciniega taken down from a temporary exhibit in the city’s Mission Branch Library. She got a court order to keep it up.
Gibson cited her artist credentials, and called the Baisden rendering a “peculiar computer version.”
She said she has created portraits of Seguín and other historical figures, crafted about 7,000 other portraits and written a textbook on forensic art.
In addition to the copy of Baisden’s oil-based portrait of Arciniega displayed at the library in the Capitol, there’s another painting in the Texana Collection room in the South Campus of the Houston-area San Jacinto College system.
A 2015 article on the college website reported that Baisden, a longtime instructor in the community college’s auto collision repair program, “has a talent for creating oil paintings, drawings, and other visual art mediums that not too many people are aware of.”
Langwell said the dispute, which has gone on for about four years, “is straining the entire Arciniega family.”
She said De León applied for federal trademark protection on the Baisden portrait after Langwell had hired Gibson to create the other one.
“The claim by De León that a trademark application, filed after my portrait was commissioned, somehow grants her exclusive, retroactive and universal ownership of a historical figure is an attack on the First Amendment, on open discourse and on academic freedom,” Langwell said in a statement.
The case set to go to trial March 18 in 224th District Court, Judge Cathy Stryker presiding.