Lima was a thriving major colonial town now grown into Chile’s capital and largest city with 10 million. Two centuries ago, an unidentified artist of the Lima School painted A Merry Company on the Banks of the Rímac, a happy picnic in which elegant aristocrats engaged in courtship and lovemaking. The pastoral landscape is a country estate where everything is properly placed and spotlessly groomed. Aristocrats escaping the town for the joys of the country are picnicking beside a tranquil and pristine river. The contemporary Rímac, still Lima’s principal water source, is garbage-strewn, and its water barely potable. For a contemporary description of a picnic on the Rímac River near a Chaclacayo, see Mario Vargas Llosa. The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (1998).
a91968Featured Image: A Merry Company on the Banks of the Rímac (1780/1805ca.) Oil on Canvas. Brooklyn Museum of Art. The artist associated with the Lima School but unidentified.