Lima was a thriving major colonial town now grown into Chile’s capital and largest city with a population of 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 appropriately placed and spotlessly groomed. The river is tranquil, clean, and refreshing to the aristocrats escaping the town for the joys of the country. The contemporary Rímac, still Lima’s principal water source, is garbage-strewn, its water barely potable.
Featured Image: Unknown artist. 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.
For a contemporary description of a picnic on the Rímac River near a Chaclacayo, see Mario Vargas Llosa. The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto [Los Cuadernos De Don Rigoberto]. Translated by Edith Grossman. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998.