Jose Maria Velazco, an excellent landscape artist, painted with great care and detail. pro ducing canvases that won for him renown in Europe. His • coloring is delicate and true to nature and his cloud effects are especially happy. Many of his best pictures have found their way to European galleries. France conferred upon him the cross of the Legion of Honor and Austria that of Francis Joseph; and other countries have rendered like tribute to his genius.
Felix Parra, best known of modern Mexican painters, does his work with loving care and in good taste. He shows invention, boldness of imagination and excellent grouping. His coloring, too, is good. Three of his pictures, 'Las Casas,' 'Galileo' and the 'Massacre of Cholula' have been photographed times with out number and copies of them may be found in every curio store in Mexico. They are all striking pictures of sterling worth, in which the drawing is good, the conception vivid and the coloring in good taste. A smaller picture, the 'Flower Market,' is of greater artistic worth, but it is almost unknown, because it has always been in private possession. The comparatively small canvas is crowded with figures, all dif ferent and all true to life.
Herman Gedovius, who received his art edu cation in German and who reflects German in fluence, is probably the best portrait painter Mexico has produced. His early work was labored but his latter shows freedom of move ment and mastery of color which reminds one of the old Flemish masters. His auto-portrait in the Academy is excellent.
Leandro Izaguirre, who spent 10 years in study in Europe, is the best known of modern Mexican portrait painters, but his imagination, execution and coloring are inferior to those of Gedovitis. Izaguirre once showed signs of' possessing daring and inventiveness in his earlier works, especially in his great canvas the 'Torture of Guauhtemoc„) now in the Academy; but his European residence weaned him of things Mexican to the loss of native art.
Gerardo Murillo is perhaps the most char acteristic of the younger Mexican artists, es pecially in Mexican landscape effects, which, on account of the high elevation of the valley of Mexico, are very difficult to analyze and depict.
Very often his work is more sketchy than solid and he gains his effects in paint through the methods of the sketch artist. Yet he is gen erally strikingly effective.
Andres Rios delights in painting scenes filled with figures. He inclines to historical char acters and costume effects of which he has made a deep study. He has imagination, originality and daring in conception, execution and grouping. 'The Orator of the Day.' which represents parishioners complimenting the young parish priest on his sermon, dis plays Rios' skill in character painting and effective grouping and his love of detail in cos tumes and salon decorations. The Road to the Poor-house' is a powerful picture, well grouped and full of expression in which the same love of carefully-executed details are manifested. Juan M. Pacheco enjoys some reputation as a landscape painter; but his work is uneven, and often descends to the common place. Rafael Ponce de Leon, who died in 1908 while little more than a boy, won for himself a 'high place as a caricaturist in Paris, where the foremost art critics recognized his talent, his daring, his humanity. He is more than a caricaturist; the artist wells out in all his work. Alfredo Ramos Martinez, who received most of his art education in Europe, has had his pictures hung in the National Salon in Paris, where they attracted the attention of the critics and invited a wordy and prolongued discussion as to their merits, which are out of the ordinary. His most characteristic canvas in oil is 'Spring time,' a large picture representing a group of young women dressed in airy, light-colored costumes, and belonging to different national types, has for its scene a spring garden. The execution is daring, the handling of light effects startling and withal pleasing.
Alberto Feuster is also a young artist of much promise. His drawing is good, his con ception bold and his coloring pleasing. He works carefully and loves to make use of all details consistent with his peculiar style of painting. JOHN HUBERT CORNYN, National University of Mexico.