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The Artist Carried in a Sillero over the Chiapas from Palenque to Ocosingo, Mexico,

ca. 1833

Jean-Frédéric Waldeck, French, 1766–1875
2014-147
Waldeck was one of the first independent European adventurers to explore Mexico and the art and culture of the Maya peoples and their descendants. In the 1830s he traveled to Chiapas to make paintings and record information about archaeological sites such as Palenque, providing early records of the ruins. This extraordinarily long-lived artist, historian, and ethnographer—who claimed to be 109 at the time of his death—painted himself being transported over steep mountains by a herculean Indian carrying him on his back in a sillero. Used in the Andes Mountains by Spanish colonial travelers, this light chair spared Europeans the rigors of travel and exploited the physical stamina of the indigenous people. Waldeck’s paintings and drawings of Maya sculpture and monuments were published in 1838 as printed illustrations in a book on his travels. Despite his errors of interpretation, they provided information about important sites and people in a remote area, and they remain informative about the state of the region as he found it.

Information

Title
The Artist Carried in a Sillero over the Chiapas from Palenque to Ocosingo, Mexico
Dates

ca. 1833

Maker

Jean-Frédéric Waldeck

Medium
Oil on wood panel
Dimensions
49.2 × 41.6 cm (19 3/8 × 16 3/8 in.) frame: 65.1 × 56.2 × 6.3 cm (25 5/8 × 22 1/8 × 2 1/2 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund
Object Number
2014-147
Place Depicted

North America, Mexico, Sierra Madre de Chiapas

Culture
French
Type
oil paintings, paintings
Materials
oil paint, panel (wood)
Subject
men, mountains, drags, litters and pedestrian land vehicles, porters, artists, figures (representations), ruins, self-portraits

Jean-Frédéric, Baron de Waldeck; Valerian S. Rybar; The Manhattan Galleries, New York; Robert Isaacson, New York; private collection, New York; Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker, London; 2014 purchase by Princeton University Art Museum.

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