clientèle has embodied numerous distinguished men, and they are very proud of telling that Porfirio Diaz himself sat to them repeatedly; while they invariably add, when relating this, that their likenesses of the President are far ahead of those by any other artists, whether painters or sculptors, who have received the questionable benefits of scholastic training. Apropos of such people, it was maintained in a recent article, in the New York Herald,[1] that they engage sadly little official patronage in Mexico. But this statement does not bear scrutiny, because, ever since Mexico city unveiled, in 1803, at a prominent spot in the Plaza de la Reforma, the vast bronze equestrian statue by Manuel Tulsa of Charles IV of Spain, a marked affection for sculptural monuments has been evinced by Mexican municipalities, these having frequently shown fairly good taste. It is true that that self-effacement, mentioned as being practised largely by architects throughout Mexico, has long been rather common also among sculptors active there. And no one at Cuernavaca, for example, appears to remember what hand is responsible for the memorial, erected there in 1891, to the soldier, Carlos Pacheco; no one in Vera Cruz seems to know who wrought, in 1892, the town's statue of the politician, Manuel Gutierrez Zamora; nor is information to be had even concerning the big piece of statuary, set up at Chapultepec in 1881, celebrating the romantic little Thermopylae enacted there during Mexico's first war with the United States. It is possible, then, that some of these striking works are not by native artists; while it must be owned that the fine Christopher Columbus, placed in 1877 in the first glorieta of the Paseo, Mexico city, must be credited, like the splendid Maximilian portrait in the Museo Nacional, to the French school, the sculptor having been Charles Cordier. Nevertheless, all this does not in the least vitiate the contention that Mexico is<references>
- ↑ This article appeared in 28th June, 1914. Notwithstanding the error referred to above, it is an interesting and valuable contribution to the history of modern Mexican art, and should certainly be consulted by the student of that subject.
