DOI Heft:
Nr. 209 (August 1910)
DOI Artikel:Barton, Mary: Painting in Mexico
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20970#0241
Painting in Mexico
verger went away to his dinner and locked me in,
I suppose with the idea of securing his tip; but I
found a large hole in the floor where new founda-
tions were being laid, and which eventually led out
to the street, so I jumped down and escaped. It
would have been good to see the old fellow’s face
when he returned. I had had considerable diffi-
culty in getting permission to paint in this church;
at first they looked at me with much suspicion,
and afterwards thought it lent them dignity to keep
me waiting on tenterhooks for a long period, seated
in a stuffy sacristy with fat clerics taking snuff
round me, and endeavouring from time to time
to satisfy their curiosity through the medium of
my limited Spanish.
Autumn and winter are the best times for out-
door work in Mexico, for in spring wind and dust
begin, and the difference they make is amazing;
not only is it extremely difficult to make everything
secure from the sudden whirls that make the easel
turn somersaults and send the stretcher against
one’s nose or face down in the dust, but the whole
aspect of nature is changed ; the distance vanishes
completely, blotted out by a thick atmosphere of
dust, and colour seems merged in a continuous
sand tint. In places the dust storms are appalling;
things that must be seen to be realised.
In summer the rains come, but they tell me that
though there is a deluge every afternoon the morn-
ings are almost uniformly fine, and that the
colouring after the rains is very wonderful and
lovely.
I travelled many hundreds of miles and painted
in eleven different centres, yet I only gained
knowledge of a quite limited portion of the
country within a radius of Mexico City.
It is a very big country, Mexico, comprising
every variety of town from a more or less up-to-
date city with handsome modern buildings, electric
light and tramways, down to “ adobe ” villages and
towns of one-storied houses with most primitive
customs; landscapes of all sorts, from bare and
colourless desert to the most luxuriant and tropical
verdure, or stretches of beautiful trees—ash and
others, like our Northern kinds—to great mountain
ranges and snow-capped peaks, most of which are
volcanic. The great Popocatapetl, which we
learnt about in our early geography and read of
in Prescott’s “ Conquest of Mexico,” is a beautiful
giant of over 17,000 feet, and he and his wife,
Ixtaccihuatl, dominate the landscape for a great
distance around, although the effect of their height
is diminished by the fact that they rise from ground
already 5,000 to 7,000 feet above the sea. Unlike
(“THE GORGE, NEXACA” BV MARY BARTON
217
verger went away to his dinner and locked me in,
I suppose with the idea of securing his tip; but I
found a large hole in the floor where new founda-
tions were being laid, and which eventually led out
to the street, so I jumped down and escaped. It
would have been good to see the old fellow’s face
when he returned. I had had considerable diffi-
culty in getting permission to paint in this church;
at first they looked at me with much suspicion,
and afterwards thought it lent them dignity to keep
me waiting on tenterhooks for a long period, seated
in a stuffy sacristy with fat clerics taking snuff
round me, and endeavouring from time to time
to satisfy their curiosity through the medium of
my limited Spanish.
Autumn and winter are the best times for out-
door work in Mexico, for in spring wind and dust
begin, and the difference they make is amazing;
not only is it extremely difficult to make everything
secure from the sudden whirls that make the easel
turn somersaults and send the stretcher against
one’s nose or face down in the dust, but the whole
aspect of nature is changed ; the distance vanishes
completely, blotted out by a thick atmosphere of
dust, and colour seems merged in a continuous
sand tint. In places the dust storms are appalling;
things that must be seen to be realised.
In summer the rains come, but they tell me that
though there is a deluge every afternoon the morn-
ings are almost uniformly fine, and that the
colouring after the rains is very wonderful and
lovely.
I travelled many hundreds of miles and painted
in eleven different centres, yet I only gained
knowledge of a quite limited portion of the
country within a radius of Mexico City.
It is a very big country, Mexico, comprising
every variety of town from a more or less up-to-
date city with handsome modern buildings, electric
light and tramways, down to “ adobe ” villages and
towns of one-storied houses with most primitive
customs; landscapes of all sorts, from bare and
colourless desert to the most luxuriant and tropical
verdure, or stretches of beautiful trees—ash and
others, like our Northern kinds—to great mountain
ranges and snow-capped peaks, most of which are
volcanic. The great Popocatapetl, which we
learnt about in our early geography and read of
in Prescott’s “ Conquest of Mexico,” is a beautiful
giant of over 17,000 feet, and he and his wife,
Ixtaccihuatl, dominate the landscape for a great
distance around, although the effect of their height
is diminished by the fact that they rise from ground
already 5,000 to 7,000 feet above the sea. Unlike
(“THE GORGE, NEXACA” BV MARY BARTON
217