A View of Popocatépetl

If you were asked to name a Mexican painter, you'd probably initially think of Frida Kahlo. Then, maybe, Diego Rivera. But the first historical Mexican artist -- indeed the first from Latin America -- to get an exhibition at London's National Gallery in its 200-year existence is José María Velasco. No, we didn't know anything about him either, so we were keen to see the show. 

 

And what you discover in José María Velasco: A View of Mexico is certainly exotic, though not perhaps in the way you're expecting. Velasco, born in 1840, was trained in a tradition of European landscape painting, and while some of the pictures you see at the National Gallery have an air of the Old World, this one definitely doesn't:  

The cactus is spectacular enough, with its green branches reaching into the blue sky above the hills beyond, but it's only when you notice the man in the shade beneath it that you realise how immense this plant really is. This is a painting that's both quite a precise botanical study -- Velasco was a scientist as well as an artist -- and something deeper; a meditation on the natural splendour of Mexico, the wall caption suggests. Or, you might assume, the insignificance of man in such a landscape?

Maybe not, though, because Velasco was also a recorder of the changes man was making to the landscape of Mexico, which was industrialising in the 19th century. This next painting, a relatively early work, is entitled The Goatherd of San Ángel, and you can just make out the goatherd and his animals on the slope in the left foreground, close to that agave plant, a traditional symbol of Mexico. But your eye is caught by two other things -- the factory looming over the valley on the right, and in the centre the rather wonderful rainbow created by the waterfall from the dam across the river. 

The first painting you see as you enter this show is a monumental landscape, and your initial reaction, like ours, might be that it's a view of somewhere in Italy. But this is the Valley of Mexico, the heartland of the country around Mexico City, and Velasco's painting combines sites of major historical significance and key topographical features. 

The small hill at the centre is Tepeyac, a sacred site from the era before Spanish colonisation; at its base is a colonial-era basilica, Our Lady of Guadalupe; in the background is Mexico City, built on the remains of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan. And on the horizon on the left, the snow-capped volcanos of Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl. Velasco painted this canvas for display at the Centennial International Exhibition in Philadephia in 1876, and he inscribed his name and nationality on a rock at the bottom left. 

Two years on, Velasco painted another view of the valley from a similar viewpoint; this one would be shown in Paris in 1878. 

It's a more evocative handling of the subject -- the nopal cactus and the eagle in flight in the foreground are references to the story of the founding of Tenochtitlan -- but it's also filled with incredible detail, traces of roads and railways lines in the distance.  

And here's another volcano, a dormant one this time, further away from Mexico City. It's Mexico's highest mountain, the Pico de Orizaba. Somewhat unexpectedly, it's come to the National Gallery from Prague, one of a number of works owned by a 19th-century Czech pharmacist who worked in Mexico and became one of Velasco's biggest collectors. 

That mountain rising so magnificently in this painting gives it something of the feel of a work by one of the European Romantics, such as Caspar David Friedrich. 

Velasco's final years were hindered by an accident in 1901 that reduced his mobility, and he relied increasingly on his memory and imagination. In his last great painting, made in 1910, he recalled the Great Comet of 1882, streaking across the skies above Mexico, based on sketches he made at the time.  

But a comet is also a harbinger of great change, and this painting takes on a prophetic quality, because late 1910 was when the decade-long Mexican Revolution began.

And you end poignantly with Velasco's last picture, apparently left unfinished on the morning he died in 1912, showing fluffy clouds and blue skies above the mountains of the Valley of Mexico. Below the ruled line that marks the edge of the plain, all is blank.

This is quite a fascinating show of art most people visiting the National Gallery will be completely unfamiliar with. However, it is a bit on the small side; we spent 40-45 minutes going round, and we did feel the admission price (see below) is perhaps a little steep for an exhibition in a space that the gallery often uses for free displays. 

Practicalities

José María Velasco: A View of Mexico is on at the National Gallery in London until August 17. The gallery is open daily from 1000 to 1800, and until 2100 on Fridays. Standard ticket prices for this show are £14 including Gift Aid, £12 without. 

The National Gallery is on the north side of Trafalgar Square, just a couple of minutes from Charing Cross or Leicester Square stations on the rail and Underground networks.

Images

José María Velasco (1840-1912), Cardón, State of Oaxaca, 1887, Museo Nacional de Arte, INBAL, Mexico City

José María Velasco, The Goatherd of San Ángel, 1863, Museo Nacional de Arte, INBAL, Mexico City
José María Velasco, The Valley of Mexico from the Hill of Santa Isabel, 1875, Museo Nacional de Arte, INBAL, Mexico City. © Reproducción autorizada por el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura. Photo: Francisco Kochen
José María Velasco, The Valley of Mexico from the Hill of Santa Isabel, 1877, Museo Nacional de Arte, INBAL, Mexico City. © Reproducción autorizada por el Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura. Photo: Francisco Kochen
José María Velasco, Pico de Orizaba, 1876, National Museum of the Czech Republic, Prague. © The National Museum of the Czech Republic, Prague. Photo: Denisa Dimitrovova
José María Velasco, The Great Comet of 1882, 1910, Acervo del Gobierno del Estado de Veracruz
José María Velasco, Study of Clouds, 1912, José María Velasco Archive, Museo Kaluz, Mexico City. © José María Velasco Archive, Museo Kaluz, Mexico City. Photo: Jorge Vertiz