Jose Maria Velasco: A View of Mexico by Dexter Dalwood
An overdue introduction to one of the Americas’ most eminent nineteenth-century artists, the Mexican painter José María Velasco. José María Velasco (1840–1912) is considered the greatest Mexican landscape painter of the nineteenth century. In portraying his native country during decades of enormous societal change, he depicted its magnificent scenery, storied past, and rapid industrialization, most famously in his monumental representations of the Valley of Mexico, the area surrounding modern Mexico City. Velasco was a true polymath, and much more than a painter of the national landscape. He was also a practising botanist, naturalist, and geologist with highly developed interests in archaeology and cartography.