Arcadópolis
The Metlac Ravine
José María Velasco, 1893
What you see
At lower right, a black locomotive heads toward us along a curving track, pulling a passenger car and trailing a column of smoke. To the left, the land drops into a deep ravine where a thin stream runs down. In the distance, above a line of hills, rises a volcano with a snowy peak.
The foliage is painted with a naturalist's care: the tree ferns on the left are instantly recognizable. Light falls clear and rosy on the mountain, greener and damper down in the ravine. Notice the jet of white steam shooting from the side of the locomotive, and the track running along the far wall of the gorge.
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.
More by José María Velasco
The Valley of Mexico from the Hill of Santa Isabel
The Curved Bridge of the Metlac Ravine
The Mexico City Alameda
Oaxaca Cathedral
The Goatherd of San Ángel
Ahuehuete (Montezuma Cypress)
The Baths of Nezahualcóyotl
Scene from the Quaternary Upper Paleolithic Period
Flora and Fauna from the Miocene Cenozoic Period. Evolution of Continental Life on Earth
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