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33 ______________________________________ The most important aspect of Adela’s travels in the mid-1890s is her increasing involvement with archaeology and its effect on her art. Not surprisingly, the starting point was that remarkable 1894 trip. At Teotihuacán in May 1894, just three months after Adela sat on top of the Pyramid of the Moon and made her sketch of the ruined city, a landowner looking for building materials discovered some ancient walls that showed the remains of what had once been an elaborate mural program. The building was just three kilometers south of the Pyramid of the Moon and had been part of the city of Teotihuacán. Several walls less than a meter high were all that remained of the small Pre-Hispanic building, but enough of the murals were preserved to indicate their richness and raise tantalizing speculation about what might have been painted on the upper part of the walls. The site was called “Teopancaxco” or “Casa de Barrios” after the owner of the property . Sometimes it is referred to as the “House of the Priests,” in reference to the figures in the murals. None of these names has any resemblance to what the place may have been called when the site was inhabited. The find caused great excitement in the area. In August 1894, Frederick Starr, the first anthropologist at the University of Chicago, recorded his visit to Teotihuacán on August 2, accompanied by a companion: San Juan de Teotihuacan. We left Mexico on the 7o/c train arriving at the station about 8. We could see the Pyramids plainly from the track and started out right boldly to go there alone. However one who had been at the station to sell pottery overtook us as we went along a side path and began to tell us of a painted house; so we went with him to see it. We Chapter Seven Teopancaxco the art of recording the ruins The more I study ancient American art, the more I bow before their wonderful skill in composition, the instinctive knowledge of just how the lines + curves should go . . . —Adela Breton to George Byron Gordon, January ,  34 Chapter Seven ______________________________________ really found something too. It is directly behind his own house and is just excavated . (Frederick Starr Field Notebooks, pp. 10–12, UC) After touring the site they returned to the house where we again examined the casa pintada [painted house] with some care . . . the floors are hard white cement: the walls are broader below than above. . . . A thin red plastering makes the surface finish ; upon it the designs are painted in green and yellow, originally they must have been very handsome, including as they do some figures. (Ibid.) The paintings at Teopancaxco were a sensation . They were the first such murals found at Teotihuacán, and the figures and color were spectacular. Dr. Antonio Peñafiel, a Mexican scholar, recognizing the importance of the paintings and their fragility—they were already badly mutilated— made color tracings and photographs of the four main portions. He also made separate tracings of various elements in the other mural fragments. Precisely when and how Adela became involved in working on copying the frescoes is not clear. Her itinerary shows her at San Martín, which is by Teopancaxco, in September 1894. The next entry is in December when she was in Papantla, Veracruz. This gap, which for once is not a missing sketchbook, could well be accounted for in large part by her work copying the Teopancaxco murals. From Starr’s account of the excavations, the murals could have all been uncovered by then. She did return to Teopancaxco in March 1895, and at least one of her watercolors was painted then. The watercolor is a rough miniature of a portion of one of the murals, which had been moved to a house some distance away and has the curious inscription of “after Peñafiel.” Adela made original tracings and watercolors of all the murals, as well as making some copies from Peñafiel’s copies and photos. Adela may have used Peñafiel’s outlines in some instances, but the colors were done directly from the murals themselves. Later she colored photographs for other archaeologists as well, using her drawings as the basis for the color and details. While the precise sequence of work at the site is not clear, what is certain is that Adela “made the most comprehensive record of the...

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