Photo, Print, Drawing Types of Notables in the Capital, Province of Santander. Santander. Tipo de notables de la capital
About this Item
Title
- Types of Notables in the Capital, Province of Santander.
Other Title
- Santander. Tipo de notables de la capital
Summary
- This watercolor by Carmelo Fernández (1809-87) shows four people of mostly European ancestry, the elite class in Cúcuta in the early 1850s. The city, on the eastern border of present-day Colombia, was then the capital of the Province of Santander and is now the capital of Norte de Santander Department. It was the scene, in 1821, of the Congress of Cúcuta, which resulted in the country's first postcolonial constitution. Fernández was born in San José de Guama, Venezuela, into a well-connected family (he was the nephew of José Antonio Páez, a hero of Venezuelan independence and three times president). He studied art in New York when still a youth. He returned home in 1827 and served in the military, where he mastered topographical drawing. Political turmoil in Venezuela prompted him to move to New Granada (present-day Colombia and Panama) in 1849. There he became the first draftsman for the Comisión Corográfica (Chorographic Commission), which was co-founded and directed by Agustín Codazzi (1793--1859), an Italian-born geographer and engineer. The commission, which began work in 1850, studied the geography, cartography, natural resources, natural history, regional culture, and agriculture of New Granada. In 1850--52 Fernández painted about 30 watercolors in the provinces northeast of Bogotá: Tunja, Pamplona, Ocaña, Socorro, Vélez, and Santander. These works, which are now in the National Library of Colombia, portray the diverse ethnic, racial, and social groups and the varied physical landscape of New Granada. Fernández was succeeded on the commission by Henry Price (1819-1863) and later Manuel María Paz (1820-1902). He returned to Caracas aged 43, where he lived most of the rest of his life. In 1873 he produced his most famous work, a portrait of Símon Bolívar that appears on Venezuelan coins.
Names
- Colombia. Comisión Corográfica Sponsor.
- Fernández, Carmelo, 1809-1887 Artist.
Created / Published
- [place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified], 1850.
Headings
- - Colombia--Norte de Santander
- - 1850
- - Clothing and dress
- - Expeditions and surveys
- - Regional Memory of the World Register, Scientific Memory of Andean America
Notes
- - Title devised, in English, by Library staff.
- - Original resource extent: 1 painting : watercolor ; 21 x 30 centimeters.
- - Original resource at: National Library of Colombia.
- - Content in Spanish.
- - Description based on data extracted from World Digital Library, which may be extracted from partner institutions.
Medium
- 1 online resource.
Source Collection
- Colección Comisión Corográfica
Digital Id
Library of Congress Control Number
- 2021670126
Online Format
- compressed data
- image