By John Pint  

 In 1894, a man living near the famed ruins of Teotihuácan, 50 kilometers from Modern Mexico City, discovered a small, preHispanic house whose walls were covered with beautifully colored murals. The place was called Teopancaxco or “La Casa de Barrios.” The paintings were the first of their kind found at Teotihuácan and visitors considered them spectacular.

Weather and time eventually did their damage to the murals and today we would have little idea of how they once looked if it were not for an extraordinary Englishwoman named Adela Breton who had fallen in love with Mexico's ruins and who painstakingly reproduced these murals as watercolors. Mary Frech, author of Adela Breton, a Victorian Artist amid Mexico's Ruins, says, quoting James Langley:

Watercolor painting of the mural at la Casa de Barrios, Teopancaxco, by British explorer Adela Breton

 “Adela 'made the most comprehensive record of the murals at Teopancaxco. Her re-creation of the colours of the murals is unsurpassed compared with the few colour reproductions available, and thus constitutes an irreplaceable memorial of the now destroyed masterpieces.'”

What was an unmarried Victorian gentlewoman doing in Mexico before the turn of the century, 5500 miles from home?

Exploring, painting, sketching, measuring and photographing not only Mexico's best-known archaeological sites like those at Chichen Itza, but, it seems, even obscure ruins from the extensive Teuchitlán Tradition of western Mexico which, it was generally believed, were unheard of before the late, great Phil Weigand gazed upon the Guachimontones in 1969.

Proof of Adela Breton's keen observations in Jalisco came to light recently when the Museum of Bristol published Breton's sketches of the now famous Circular Pyramids of Teuchitlán.

“Accurate drawings of the Guachimontones in 1896?” exclaimed archaeologist Rodrigo Esparza. “That's amazing!”

 

Adela Breton's 1896 sketch of the three principal Guachimontones near Teuchitlán. Click on the image for better resolution.

Even more amazing was the discovery, again thanks to the Bristol Museum, that Adela Breton had taken the first known photographs of the three largest “Guaxi mounds” as she labeled them.

Did Miss Breton publish anything related to the Guachimontones?  The answer is yes, but apparently only a few words. Here is what she says in a paper delivered at the International Congress of Americanists in 1902:

“Teuchitlán is a small town at the foot of a long spur of [Tequila] volcano... At Teuchitlán, obsidian rejects are thickly strewn over a great extent of ground.  In addition to the obsidian, it has a most interesting ancient site on the summit of the hill, and the remarkable mounds and circles called Huaerchi Monton half way up.”

While in Jalisco, Miss Breton's resourceful guide Pablo Solorio somehow learned that a mound housing an untouched tomb had been discovered near Etzatlán and had recently been opened. Adela went to the Mound of Guadalupe and gives us what is probably the first description of the unearthing of a burial site in western Mexico. “Unfortunately,” she reported, “there was no skilled supervision, no data were secured, and most of the figures were broken.”

Fortunately, however, the resourceful Adela was on hand and recorded, according to Mary Frech, that “the mound was about forty feet high and held a burial with pots, jewelry, clay 'portrait' figures ranging from twelve to twenty inches tall and other artifacts.” Of course she sketched a number of those broken figures and even photographed the Mound of Guadalupe, of which today little is left to see.

Adela Catherine Breton was born in London in 1849.After the death of both her parents, she was “easily convinced” by pioneer in archaeological techniques Alfred Maudslay to travel to Chichén Itzá to make sketches which would allow Maudslay to check the accuracy of his own drawings, before publishing his Biologia Centrali-Americana. Thus began her curious career as an archaeological artist.

According to Matt Williams of the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution, Adela “developed into a world-renowned archaeological copyist thanks to her drawings of friezes, carved reliefs, painted plasters and other cultural treasures – some of which are now the only records that remain of items long since lost to vandalism and decay.”

Williams says Adela traveled hard and wrote, “I used to live chiefly on air and a few peanuts for the long riding journeys — 30 miles without any breakfast.”

"Adela chose not to marry,” he adds, “as it was the only thing that guaranteed a woman's independence in those days. She wanted to be free to travel and chart her own destiny."

According to Kate Devlin, a writer forTrowelblazers.com, Harvard anthropologist Alfred Tozzer once said, “You look at Miss Breton and set her down as a weak, frail and delicate person who goes into convulsions at the sight of the slightest unconventionality in the way of living. But I assure you, her appearance is utterly at variance with her real self.”

Adela Breton died at age 73 in Barbados in 1923 and left most of her work and collection to the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, the best of which is now on display (until May 14, 2017) in an exhibition entitled Adela Breton: Ancient Mexico in Colour. “It will be the first time the life-size copies have been displayed for 70 years,” says Senior Curator Sue Giles, “and they probably won’t be displayed again for another 70.”