Pancho Fierro

Pancho Fierro (born 1810, Lima, Peru—died July 28, 1879, Lima) was a self-taught Peruvian artist known for his watercolours of everyday life in Lima.

Fierro was of mixed Spanish, indigenous, and African descent and was born into humble circumstances. The watercolour paintings he made of life in Lima, however, gave him a certain mobility. Fierro was self-taught and began his career making maps, illustrating theatre leaflets, and painting murals. He painted murals throughout his career, sometimes in the homes of Lima’s elite. One of his best-known murals is a satirical depiction of a bull placing swords in a bullfighter.

Satire and humour often marked his costumbrismo watercolours, images that chronicled the types, customs, and costumes of everyday Limeños (residents of Lima). Fierro’s watercolours were part of a larger tradition of documenting the peoples and places of Latin America, a tradition in which European traveler-artists and scientists, such as Alexander von Humboldt, as well as local artists participated. Stylistically, Fierro’s work was more picturesque than scientific or academic, particularly in terms of its free interpretation of space and proportion. But his lively images captured the atmosphere of everyday life in Lima with an eye that visiting artists never achieved.

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Within the costumbrismo genre, Fierro depicted a great variety of people—street vendors, laundresses, soldiers, clergymen, and wealthy women with their maids—and places, such as shops, gambling scenes, processions, and dress balls. His work chronicled the shifts in fashion and the evolution of military dress across much of the 19th century. Some of his paintings were sympathetic, as in Traveling Salesman, a portrait of a stooped salesman leaning on a walking stick as he carries a heavy bag, while others were sardonic, such as Friar Tomato, whose face Fierro distorts in caricature. Song of the Devils (c. 1830) reflects Fierro’s interest in Peru’s folklore through its depiction of Afro-Peruvians participating in a local religious ritual dressed as devils. He captured the lives of Lima’s elite in a number of other works. Many of his paintings, as well as works by other costumbristas, were collected by Archibald Smith for the 1853 volume Lima Costumes.