Frederick Catherwood (27 February 1799 – 27 September 1854) was an
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
artist,
architect
An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
and explorer, best remembered for his meticulously detailed drawings of the ruins of the
Maya civilization
The Maya civilization () of the Mesoamerican people is known by its ancient temples and glyphs. Its Maya script is the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas. It is also noted for its art, a ...
. He explored
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica ...
in the mid 19th century with writer
John Lloyd Stephens
John Lloyd Stephens (November 28, 1805October 13, 1852) was an American explorer, writer, and diplomat. Stephens was a pivotal figure in the rediscovery of Maya civilization throughout Middle America and in the planning of the Panama railroad.
...
. Their books, ''Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatán'' and ''Incidents of Travel in Yucatán'', were best sellers and introduced to the Western world the civilization of the ancient Maya. In 1837, Catherwood was elected into the
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the f ...
as an Honorary member.
Mediterranean travels
Catherwood, having made many trips to the Mediterranean between 1824 and 1832 to draw the monuments made by the
Egyptians,
Carthaginians
The Punic people, or western Phoenicians, were a Semitic people in the Western Mediterranean who migrated from Tyre, Phoenicia to North Africa during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term ''Punic'' – the Latin equivalent of the ...
, and
Phoenicia
Phoenicia () was an ancient thalassocratic civilization originating in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The territory of the Phoenician city-states extended and shrank throughout their histor ...
ns, stated that the monuments in the Americas bear no architectural similarity to those in the Old World. Thus, they must have been made by the native people of the area.
Catherwood made visits to
Greece
Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders ...
,
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...
,
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
, and
Palestine and with
Joseph Bonomi the Younger
Joseph Bonomi the Younger (9 October 1796 – 3 March 1878) was an English sculptor, artist, Egyptologist and museum curator.
Early life
Bonomi was born in London (Gunnis says Rome) into a family of architects. His father, Joseph Bonomi the El ...
made drawings and watercolors of the ancient remains there. During a six-week period in 1833, Catherwood was probably the first
Westerner to make a detailed survey of the
Dome of the Rock in
Jerusalem
Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
.
Catherwood developed a reputation as a topographical artist. He perfected a drawing technique which used the ''
camera lucida
A ''camera lucida'' is an optical device used as a drawing aid by artists and microscopists.
The ''camera lucida'' performs an optical superimposition of the subject being viewed upon the surface upon which the artist is drawing. The artist s ...
''
and supplied the drawings for the panoramas of Jerusalem and Thebes shown by
Robert Burford Robert Burford (1791 - 30 January 1861) was an English painter of panoramas.
Life
Burford was born in 1791 and first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1812 with ''A View of Westminster Hall''. In conjunction with fellow artist Henry Aston Barker, ...
in
Leicester Square.
Central America
![TulumCatherwood1844](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/TulumCatherwood1844.jpg)
In 1836 he met travel writer
John Lloyd Stephens
John Lloyd Stephens (November 28, 1805October 13, 1852) was an American explorer, writer, and diplomat. Stephens was a pivotal figure in the rediscovery of Maya civilization throughout Middle America and in the planning of the Panama railroad.
...
in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
. They read the account of the ruins of
Copán
Copán is an archaeological site of the Maya civilization in the Copán Department of western Honduras, not far from the border with Guatemala. This ancient Maya city mirrors the beauty of the physical landscape in which it flourished—a fer ...
published by
Juan Galindo
Juan Galindo (1802 – 30 January 1840) was an Anglo-Irish political activist and military and administrative officer under the Liberal government of the Federal Republic of Central America. He represented the government in a diplomatic mission t ...
, and decided to try to visit
Central America
Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. ...
for themselves and produce a more detailed and better illustrated account. The expedition came together in 1839 and continued through the following year, visiting dozens of ruins and resulting in the detailed description of 44 sites, many for the first time.
Stephens and Catherwood are credited for the rediscovery of the Maya civilization, and through their publications brought the Maya back into the minds of the Western World.
The expedition resulted in the book ''Incidents of Travel in Central America,
Chiapas, and
Yucatan'', published in 1841, with text by Stephens and engravings based on the drawings of Catherwood.
Stephens and Catherwood returned to Yucatan to make further explorations, resulting in ''Incidents of Travel in Yucatan'' in 1843.
The following year Catherwood published ''Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan'', with 25 colour
lithographs from watercolours he made at various ruins. This folio was published in May 1844 simultaneously in London and New York in an edition of 300. Some 282 copies are known to survive, mostly held in private collections or libraries.
A large number of his original drawings and paintings were destroyed when the building where he was exhibiting them in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
caught fire, but a number survive in museums and private collections, often showing more detail than the published engravings.
Last years
![Catherwood stela d](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Catherwood_stela_d.jpg)
With the
California Gold Rush Catherwood moved to
San Francisco, California
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
to open up a store to supply miners and prospectors, which he considered a more likely way to make money than chasing after the gold himself.
In 1854, Frederick Catherwood was a passenger aboard the
steamship ''
Arctic
The Arctic ( or ) is a polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), Danish Realm (Greenland), Finland, Iceland, N ...
'', making a crossing of the
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...
from Liverpool to New York. On 27 September
[See Bourbon (1999); Fox (2003, p. 128). The ''Arctic'' left port on 20 September, which is sometimes (erroneously) given as the date of the collision.] in conditions of poor visibility, the ''Arctic'' collided with the French steamer ''Vesta'', and sank with much loss of life, including Catherwood. Mysteriously Catherwood's name was left off the official casualty lists for weeks until a concerted effort by his friends and colleagues resulted in a belated inclusion of a single line in the ''
New York Herald Tribune'', under the listing of "The Saved and the Lost: ''Mr Catherwood Also is Missing''". He was 55 years old.
The question of his portrait
![Members of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Members_of_the_Boston_Society_for_Medical_Improvement.jpg)
Traditionally, it is thought that the only portrait of Catherwood is in the famous Table XXIV of Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan, with a view of the temple of Tulum. The scholar Fabio Bourbon, after studies and a long reflection, has formulated a different hypothesis. It is well known that during the second expedition in Central America, Stephens and Catherwood were accompanied by a young surgeon (and ornithologist) from Boston, Samuel Cabot III, born in Boston on 20 September 1815. The Cabot family was part of the upper class in Boston. At the time of the trip, he was almost 27 years old. Years later he would become an eminent surgeon and a well known personality in Boston. Samuel III was described as a person rather slender, tall, with light hair and light eyes. There is an image taken by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) with members of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement, around 1853. Samuel is seated, third from left. Eleven years had passed since the adventure in Yucatan, but he could very well be the person depicted by Catherwood in the table, holding a measuring tape. Catherwood, in fact, was a pragmatic man, used to documenting the reality with his pencil. Frederick presumably had no interest in representing himself, indeed he never painted his self-portrait.
Notes
References
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
*
"Drawing From the Past: Maya Antiquity Through the Eyes of Frederick Catherwood" online exhibition by Smith College Libraries of Catherwood's ''Views of Ancient Monuments'' lithographs
online reproductions of a permanent exhibition of his work at the Casa Frederick Catherwood, Mérida, Yucatán
including all the illustrations of Uxmal, Kabah, Sayil, and Labná in Stephens and Catherwood's 1843 Incidents of Travel in Yucatan and in Catherwood's 1844 Views of Ancient Monuments.
* Frederick Catherwood Archival card catalog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Catherwood, Frederick
1799 births
1854 deaths
Mayanists
19th-century Mesoamericanists
English Mesoamericanists
Mesoamerican artists
19th-century explorers
Explorers of Central America
People of the California Gold Rush
Deaths due to shipwreck at sea
Cartographers of the Middle East
19th-century cartographers
English explorers of North America