Alejandro Bonilla Correa-Cruzado (1820-1901) was Dominican painter and teacher born in Santo Domingo, considered one of the fathers of the national Dominican pictorial tradition. A close friend to the founding fathers of Dominican independence, “La Trinitaria”, Juan Pablo Duarte, Matías Ramón Mella, and Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, he was the first to paint their portraits and one of the signatories of the Manifesto of January 16, 1844. The first important national painter and career, or professional, artist, Bonilla established a workshop in his home city and went on to become teacher to other prominent Dominican painters. His works were mostly of the realist, or romantic style. Art historian and critic Danilo de los Santos attributes Bonilla as the most perceptible and formal starting point of Dominican art.