Adela Breton : a Victorian artist amid Mexico's ruins / Mary F. McVicker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McVicker, Mary Frech.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Breton, Adela, 1849-1923--Travel--Mexico.

Breton, Adela.

Breton, Adela, 1849-1923.

Indians of Mexico--Antiquities.

Indians of Mexico.

Indian architecture--Mexico.

Indian architecture.

Women artists.

Travel.

Mexico.

Women artists--Mexico--Biography.

Mexico in art.

Indians in art.

Mexico--Antiquities.

Antiquities.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

vi, 218 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 27 cm

Place of Publication:

Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press, 2005.

Summary:

Adela Breton (1849-1923) was a Victorian gentlewoman whose parents supported her education and artistic training. Anthropology and the "new" science of geology appealed to her father and soon captured her own interest. After her father's death in 1887, Adela began a lifetime of travel, exploring past cultures and landscapes. Often camping or staying in small villages, accompanied only by her Indian guide and companion, she created a pictorial account of the Mexican countryside in the 1890s.

Famed archaeologist and fellow Briton Alfred P. Maudslay, aware of Adela's talents, asked her to return to Mexico and check his copies of the murals at the ruins of Chichen Itza in the jungles of the Yucatan. This was the turning point in her career that would lead to international recognition as an archaeological copyist, researcher, and interpreter of the rapidly disappearing painted walls of ancient Mexico. Today her artwork is the only detailed color record of many aspects of the Pre-Columbian past.

When the Mexican Revolution of 1910 ended her travels to Mexico, she turned her inquiring mind to linguistics and began her study and copying of rare colonial-era documents. Mary McVicker writes of Adela Breton, her independence from the strictures of Victorian life, her career as a pioneering artist-archaeologist, and the enduring significance of her work.

Contents:

The Bretons of Bath

Early years

The freedom of travel

The grand tour of Mexico

Painting on the grand tour

Refining the focus

Teopancaxco : the art of recording the ruins

Pablo

Sorting out

Chichén Itzá

Life begins at fifty

The extraordinary undertaking : the murals in the upper Temple of the Jaguars

The professionalization of Adela

Don Alfredo

The 1902 Congress of Americanists

Back to work

Dredging the cenote

The passing of Pablo

Drawing and Dredging

Adela at work

Acanceh : the Palace of the Stuccoes

Study abroad

A scholar not a painter

Organizing an international meeting

The 1912 congress of Americanists

Aftermath

The manuscript :"collectors"

The onset of the war

In search of health

Home again

Last travels.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-216) and index.

ISBN:

0826336787

OCLC:

60705667