Pío Casimiro Bacener

Pío Casimiro Bacener was born in San Juan, where his mother, a slave, had been given the surname of her owners, the José Maria Bacener family. By the time he married in 1868, Bacener either had been freed by his owners or had purchased his freedom. He enrolled in the Public School of Drawing, a free art school founded by the famous Puerto Rican artist Francisco Oller y Cestero (1833-1917), who had studied painting among the impressionists in Paris before returning to his native country.