Even the city of his birth was named after him: Since 1945, the Mexican town of Temascalcingo has officially been called Temascalcingo de José Mariá Velasco. The painter mainly created landscapes and portraits and is still one of the most famous artists in Mexico today. During his lifetime, José María Velasco (1840-1912) was also well known in Europe and the USA, winning a gold medal at the Philadelphia International Exposition in 1876 and first prize at the 1889 World's Fair in Paris. Velasco was regarded as a polymath, and his focus, which influenced his painting, was on geology, anatomy and biology. His paintings were so detailed and true to nature that they were used for scientific purposes. Furthermore, Velasco's landscape paintings became a symbol of Mexican national identity, the most important work being El valle de México, of which he produced seven versions. At the same time, his paintings testified to the advancing industrialization of his homeland. With the exhibition José María Velasco. A View of Mexico, which runs from March 29 to August 17, the National Gallery in London is paying tribute to him. It is the first major solo show of Velasco's work in the United Kingdom and the first outside Mexico since 1976.
Velasco studied landscape painting under the Italian Eugenio Landesio (1810-1879) at the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City. It is the oldest art academy in the country. Under Landesio's influence, landscape painting developed into an esteemed genre in Mexico, and his pupil Velasco ultimately elevated it to high art and stood at the beginning of the so-called landscape avant-garde. Velasco's oeuvre can be divided into three phases: From 1860 until the late 1880s, his art was academically influenced, followed by a brief, more experimental phase with references to French Impressionism, and from around 1892 until his death, he painted in his own personal style. His departure from academic painting was the reason why he lost his chair at the Academia de San Carlos in 1907. Today, over 400 oil paintings, drawings and watercolors by Velasco are known.
