Arcadópolis
Lady bathing at Chorrillos
Pancho Fierro, c. 1840
What you see
A woman stands with her back to us at the shoreline, just right of center, gazing out to sea. She wears a knee-length navy coat with pale trim, dark trousers and a flat white hat. On the left, cut off by the edge, a tall post that looks like woven cane rises from a base of stacked stones. The horizon runs across the middle of the sheet.
The gray-blue sea is made of loose horizontal strokes, and the brown sand of diagonal washes that steer the eye toward her. The sky is left almost bare. One curious detail: at her waist, held by a band, she carries two rounded white objects that look like floats.
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
A watercarrier riding a donkey
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.