Adela Breton (1849-1923) was a British traveling artist who dedicated part of her career to visual recordings of temple ruins and Mayan artifacts produced during her travels in Mexico between 1892 and 1910. Some of Breton's drawings, today preserved in Bristol Museum, stand out among the scarce representations of monuments and wall paintings from the Yucatán peninsular region. The careful decals, many of which were made on the same scale as the originals, the application of pigments, the direct observation of the artifacts and the use of scientific recording techniques give Breton's set of works the materialization of a moment in the past of the temples of Yucatán that no longer exists. There are different documentary typologies that form an extensive archive that is still little studied in specialized literature.
This research analyzes the plates of the Temple of the Jaguars in Chichén Itzá, Yucatán. The collection is formed by large format works representated battles, harvest scenes and ruined temples. These representations demonstrate Breton's meticulous research over the seven years she spends in the region. Starting from her archaeological training, Adela sought to record how objects appeared to her observation, and outlined fragments of materialities to highlight the passage of time. Therefore, in the Bristol Musuem archives, we found representations of murals with blank spaces, signs of loss of support, fading of colors, irregularities and worn areas (Méndez, 2003; Rodenas, 2014).
Throughout the 1900s, several factors contributed to the degradation of the Jaguars Temple. Prior to color photographic printing, Adela Breton's production became emblematic, especially the polychrome records, as they are the one of the most important documentation of the pigments of these parietal paintings and bas-reliefs. Scientific documentation from the 19th century developed methodologies for visual production to minimize any interference from the artist, so-called “truth to nature”. To this sense, the construction of the image considered strategies that involved direct observation of phenomena, knowledge of recording techniques, study of collections and scientific archives. In this scenario, travel is a fundamental premise (Daston; Galison, 2010; Crary, 1988).
Based on the work of Adela Breton, this research investigates the following propositions: 1. The appropriations of picturesque and ruin aesthetics in the scientific visual production of the 19th century; 2. The use of photography in the traveling artists visual works, particularly the methodology used in Breton's creative process; 3. Archaeological studies in the British context emphasizing on the research of the materiality of collections, especially the archaeological interpretations of polychromie in Mayan works.
Breton's visual repertoire is related to the aesthetics of ruins and the notions of picturesque disseminated by British print production in the 19th century (Arnold, 2003). Adela Breton's archaeological paintings start from these aesthetic and scientific assumptions, and her records of the Temple of the Jaguars are detailed representations of monuments ruined today.
Keywords: Adela Breton; Temple of the Jaguars; ruined monuments; polychrome; scientific documentation.
Arnold, D. “Facts or Fragments? Visual histories in the age of mechanical reproduction”, in: Dana Arnold/Stephen Bending. Tracing Architecture. The Aesthetics of Antiquarianism. Malden: Blackwell, 2003.
Crary, J. Techniques of the observer. October, Vol. 45, MIT Press, 1988;
Daston, L.; Galison, P. Objectivity. New York: Zone Books, 2010.
Méndez, A. Sensibilidad victoriana, cuerpos mexicanos: el arte de Adela Breton. Poligrafías. Número 4, 2003.
Rodenas, A. M. Transatlantic Travels to Nineteenth-Century Latin America: European Women Pilgrims. Lewisbugh: Bucknell University Press, 2014.
Maria de Fátima Medeiros de Souza, PhD, University of São Paulo, Brazil. Postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Brazilian Studies at the University of São Paulo. Ph.D. in Theory and History of Art at the University of Brasília. My current research has explored the production and circulation of natural collections and scientific images by traveling artists of the 18th and 19th centuries. Besides that, I also investigate the illustrated editorial production emphasizing on the material, historical, and aesthetic aspects of books, prints, and various printed materials. CV Link: https://lattes.cnpq.br/4971554987953486
Adela Breton was a British traveling artist who registered Mesoamerican ruins during her travels to Mexico at the beginning of the 20th Century. Breton’s archaeological paintings of the Temple of the Jaguars in Chichén Itzá will be analyzed considering the following conjectures: 1. the appropriations of picturesque and ruined aesthetics in the scientific visual production; 2. the use of photography in Breton's creative process; 3. the archaeological interpretations of polychrome in Mayan works. Breton's archaeological paintings are detailed representations of monuments ruined today. They merge the aesthetics of ruin depiction and the techniques of scientific representation.