245. Thomas Bangs Thorpe (1815-1878, active New Orleans 18361854, and 18621863), “The ‘Temple’” and “The Pyramid”, both at ChichénItzá, Yucatán, 1843; a pair of paintings, oil on canvas, signed and dated en verso of the canvas “Thos. B. Thorpe, Pinx. / after B. M. Norman 1843”, and with stencils of New Orleans art-supply houses also en verso of the canvas, each 21 1/2 in. x 27 in., framed.; accompanied by B.M. Norman, Rambles in Yucatan...1843, 3rd edition, 3/4 leather, 304 pgs.
the wonderful drawings of Frederick Catherwood (17991854), now mostly in the British Museum, which are “the first accurate drawings of Mayan inscriptions and buildings ever recorded.”
Norman’s two editions are “embellished” with some three dozen engravings after his own drawings and vignettes; and on the basis of two of the most handsome among them, Thomas Bangs Thorpe in New Orleans—a newspaperman and amateur artist— painted these two arresting images of The Temple and The Pyramid of the “Chichen Ruins.” Both pictures display the naïve charm of this 245 amateur painter, and $40000/60000 introduce minor changes into the Note: In November or scenes: the luxuriant December of 1842 skyline vegetation of Norman’s plates is somewhat played down, while other (with a second edition in 1843) Benjamin Moore Norman (1809-1860) published foreground plants are added; and the observing figures (including a self-portrait of in New Orleans and Philadelphia his important Rambles in Yucatan, or Notes of Norman himself, sketching the Pyramid) are slightly increased in scale. Because of Travel Through the Peninsula, including a visit to the remarkable ruins of Chichen, their precocious date of 1843, and especially their production in New Orleans, Kabah, Zayi, and Uxmal, with numerous illustrations. He had been anticipated in these fascinating paintings document the first awakening of the “archaeological this pioneering effort by John Lloyd Stephens (1805-1852), whose similar Incidents epidemic” of public interest in the Pre-Columbian Americas. of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and the Yucatan (reflecting a particularly References: B.M. Norman, Rambles in Yucatan, New Orleans and Philadelphia, 1842/1843, pp. 111,115; intrepid expedition of 1839-40) had been published in New York in September of V.W. von Hagen, Frederick Catherwood, Archt., 1950; C.W. Ceram, Gods, Graves, and Scholars, New 1841; it and Stephens’ Incidents of Travel in the Yucatan (expedition of 1841-42, York, 1952, pp. 337-356; Encyclopædia of New Orleans Artists, 1718-1918, Historic New Orleans Collection, 1987, pp. 375-376. published March 1843) had both been memorably illustrated by engravings after W denotes the lot is illustrated at www.nealauction.com
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