Arcadópolis
A watercarrier riding a donkey
Pancho Fierro, c. 1848
What you see
A water carrier rides a pale gray donkey toward the right, while he himself looks straight out at us. He wears a white hat, a shirt with rolled sleeves, a light apron and puffy blue breeches. In front of his legs, on a blue-green blanket, the donkey carries two dark-hooped wooden barrels, a gray board and a long pole with hooks jutting out to the left.
The watercolor is light and precise, with no setting at all: only a gray shadow beneath the hooves places the scene on the ground. The browns of the wood and the blue breeches stand out against the white of the animal. Keep an eye out for the black triangular stirrups and the word “Aguador” penciled at the bottom.
About Pancho Fierro
Francisco “Pancho” Fierro was born in Lima in 1807, the son of a priest and an enslaved woman of the household, and earned his living painting shop signs, bullfight posters and murals. His quick, humorous watercolours portray the tapadas, street vendors, friars, musicians and riders of nineteenth-century Lima, usually against an empty background that leaves the spotlight on clothing and gesture. He painted more than a thousand scenes, which were exported to Europe, Asia and North America, and the painter José Sabogal called him “the first Peruvian artist”.
More by Pancho Fierro
Tapada limeña
A man and woman dancing the Zamacueca
Lady bathing at Chorrillos
A woman getting into her saya viewed from behind
A woman walking with a Llama
A woman carrying a vessel on her head and a child on her back
A man riding a mule, his whip raised, another mule loaded with grass alongside
Two musicians and a man carrying on his head a rooster in cage
A priest from the Mercederian order (Order of Our Lady of Mercy)
The Arcadópolis Museum has 443 public-domain works in 40 rooms, free to explore in 3D in your browser.