Steam train crossing a curved iron bridge over a jungle ravine, with large-leaved plants in the foreground

The Curved Bridge of the Metlac Ravine

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What you see

An iron bridge on slender towers sweeps in a wide curve across the ravine from left to right. A train is crossing it: the locomotive heads our way pouring black smoke, with the cars strung out behind. A clear river runs below, and the track reaches the lower right corner, almost at our feet.

The greens range from the sunlit yellow of the slopes to the deep green of the shadows, under a pink and lilac sky. The bridge's fine, exact lines contrast with the loosely painted foliage. Watch for the tree fern and the big heart-shaped leaves at lower left, and the puff of white steam beside the locomotive.

About José María Velasco

José María Velasco trained at the Academy of San Carlos under the Italian landscape painter Eugenio Landesio, and painted the Valley of Mexico again and again from the hills around it. He was also a naturalist who studied botany, zoology and geology; in 1879 he published a study of the axolotls of Lake Santa Isabel, a species that now bears his name, Ambystoma velasci. He won medals in Philadelphia (1876) and Paris (1889), was made a knight of the Legion of Honour, and taught perspective and landscape to Diego Rivera.

All 10 works by José María Velasco