In 1877, Juan Manuel Blanes finished El Juramento de los Treinta y Tres Orientales (The Oath of the Thirty-Three Easterners). The painting was exhibited in Montevideo and Buenos Aires, receiving recognition from the public and the highest authorities of both margins of the River Plate, to later become a pictorial symbol of national independence from foreign power. A sketch is a design or project that contains only the main features of a painting. By exhibiting the small sketch of the painting, its constitutive ideas are highlighted, while they remain under the watchful vigilance of the guard within a public institution, the museum.