This chapter discusses some of the mechanisms that the ideologues of the Cuban planter class, grouped at the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País in the early nineteenth century, used to transform art into a white domain. These ideologues characterized the works of popular Afrodescendant artists as crude and unsophisticated, and institutionalized art education through the Academia de San Alejandro (1818). The Academia excluded applicants of African descent (as well as women) and trained future artists in European styles, sensibilities, and techniques. As a result, we know of only one artist with identified works in nineteenth-century Cuba, Vicente Escobar (1762–1834), who was socially identified as pardo. Escobar came from a privileged sector of Havana’s population of African descent. Members of his family occupied prominent positions in the Pardo Battalions of the Militias and were successful craftsmen who accumulated some wealth, including slaves. It was probably thanks to these family connections that Escobar learned his trade as painter. This may also explain how he managed to acquire formal training at the Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, which he attended in 1784.