Jiutepec, near Cuernavaca, Mexico
Samuel Colman American
According to the inscription, this watercolor was painted on June 28, 1904, in Jiutepec, a small municipality south of Cuernavaca, Mexico. Colman may have been attracted to the town for its reputation as an unspoiled historic site. He recorded a vignette of vernacular architecture, possibly an interior courtyard, carefully detailing its varied features from the staircase ascending to a terrace to the arched doorways. Using the beige tone of the paper to depict the buildings, Colman heightened accents with white gouache, and added depth and shadow with darker pigments. He was likely inspired to travel to the region by contemporary painter-friends such as Frederic Edwin Church, who visited Mexico regularly after 1883, working in the artists’ colony of nearby Cuernavaca.
