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Course: Art of the Americas to World War I > Unit 9
Lesson 2: Art of Mexico in the 18th and 19th centuries- The Academy of San Carlos
- Mexican Independence
- Ferdinand Deppe, The Mission of San Gabriel, Alta California in May 1832
- Manuel Vilar, Tlahuicole
- A new art for a new nation: Félix Parra’s Bartolomé de las Casas
- Velasco, The Valley of Mexico
- Velasco, The Valley of Mexico
- José María Velasco, The Candelabrum
- Costumbrismo
- Picturing Racial and Social Identities in José Agustín Arrieta’s Costumbrista Painting, La Sorpreza
- Coming of Age in Gutiérrez’s Costumbrista painting, La despedida del joven indio (The Young Indian’s Farewell)
- Retablo of La Mano Poderosa/The All Powerful Hand
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José María Velasco, The Candelabrum
José María Velasco, The Candelabrum, 1887, oil on canvas, 61 x 45 cm (Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City)
A conversation between Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Dr. Beth Harris. Created by Smarthistory.
Video transcript
(cheerful music) - [Speaker 1] We're looking
at a beautiful painting of an astounding cactus by
the great landscape painter, Jose Maria Velasco. And we're here in the National
Museum of Art in Mexico City. - [Speaker 2] The painting
that we're looking at is the famous "Candelabrum"
cactus from Oaxaca. This particular Candelabrum
cactus that Velasco has painted is near the town
of Tecomavaca in Oaxaca state. - [Speaker 1] It fills the
entire canvas, which is vertical, which is an unusual format
for a landscape painting. You can see that he's carefully studied the way that the light falls
on each of the branches of the cactus. - [Speaker 2] We know Velasco
saw this on his travels and he became fascinated by it. And so, returned to it and
did studies of the cactus to then create the painting
that we're seeing here. - [Speaker 1] And yet,
for all it's capturing perfectly of the light on the branches, it's also loosely painted in
some areas along the tree, especially on the shady side. Those purple-ish pinks. You can feel a love of the
Mexican countryside here. - [Speaker 2] Which is
something that we can see throughout his paintings
in the late 19th century, where there is this love
of landscape as a symbol of the national identity of Mexico. - [Speaker 1] He's included
a figure, so we have a sense of the enormous scale of
the Candelabrum cactus, and also the smallness
of man in relationship to the landscape, a sense
of the age of this tree that's reached this enormous height, and the many generations of human beings that have passed while
this cactus has endured. - [Speaker 2] Jose Maria
Velasco, as a painter, was doing many of these
different preparatory drawings, and was interested in
the scientific accuracy of his paintings. As we look around the gallery here, we can see numerous examples
of his studies of wildlife, of his studies of even
the pre-Hispanic past. - [Speaker 1] This interest in Mexico in his own time, but also
in Mexico looking back historically, archeological sites. There's a watercolor here
that he did of an Aztec pot. Although the subject matter is Mexican, to me these landscapes really
speak of the beauty of nature. - [Speaker 2] Endowing nature with this monumental, grandiose quality. (cheerful music)