195. [TEXAS LITHOGRAPHS].  IRIARTE, Hesiquio (lithographer).  Two early Mexican lithographs showing towns in Texas. Mexico, 1845:

(1)  Galveston:  SALAZAR, [Hipólito] (lithographer).  [Above image at top] Revista de Méjico [below image] Lito. de Salazar | Galveston (Tejas.).  Lithograph.  [Image only, without captions] 10.8 x 17.9 cm. Two small wormholes in image (minimally affecting sky and water), lightly browned and foxed, otherwise very good.  Although the artist of the view is not attributed, like the following lithograph of Houston, the image appears to have been derived from the view of Galveston found in Matilda C. Houstoun's Texas and the Gulf of Mexico... (London: John Murray, 1844).

(2)  Houston:  IRIARTE, H[esiquio] (artist) & Hipólito Salazar (lithographer). [Above image at top] Revista de Méjico [below image] Lito de Salazar. | Houston, (Capital de Tejas) [signed in stone at lower right]:  H. Iriarte.  Lithograph.  [Image only, without captions] 12.7 x 18.4 cm.  Two small wormholes in sky at upper left and image area at left center, slight foxing and browning, otherwise very good.  Though this early view of Houston is not so fanciful as the apocryphal “Alpine” view of Houston by Day and Haghe found in Matilda C. Houstoun's Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, the present view may well have taken inspiration from it. Like Day and Haghe’s view, it stretches credulity with its rolling hills, church steeples, and charming village looking more like England than the rude, flat frontier town of Houston in the early 1840s. The Day and Haghe view is considered the first published view of Houston, and served as the prototype for several later views showing the city in the midst of mountains.

These prints are in a very poor copy of Vol. I of the periodical Revista científica y literaria de Méjico publicada por los antiguos redactores del Museo Mejicano (Mexico: J. M. Lara, 1845), containing 25 lithographs.  Mathes, Mexico on Stone, pp. 23:  “Prior to the invasion by United States, saw the production of some of the finest lithography to appear in nineteenth-century Mexico [including] the Revista científica...printed by Lara in 1844 and 1845.”  Palau 263748. Sabin 70300.  Other lithographs in the volume include excellent scenes and interiors in Mexico (Guanajuato, El Salto de San Anton in Cuernavaca, the National Theatre in Mexico City, etc.) and some interesting scenes of the present U.S., such as Smyth’s oft-reprinted view of the California vaqueros (from Beechey), Pacific coast views of California, Oregon, Russian America (from Duflot de Mofras), a Borderlands scene of Native Americans dashing on horseback (Escenas en el Desierto, signed in stone “Blanco Herédia” and caption below image indicating Salazar made the lithograph). “Iriarte, Herédia and Salazar produced lithographs of high quality” (p. 24, Mathes, Mexico on Stone).

Ron Tyler in notes to his unpublished work on nineteenth-century lithographs of Texas suggests that the Galveston and Houston views were probably the first lithographic views of Texas cities published in Mexico after Texas was annexed by the United States.  The earliest views listed by Reps (Views and Viewmakers of Urban America) for Galveston and Houston are, respectively, 1855? and 1873. These prints (along with the Escenas en el Desierto) accompanied articles by Manuel Payno discussing the history of Texas and Borderland tribes such as Lipan and Comanche (pp. 144-145 & 169-174).  In the Texas article Payno decries the Mexican mistake of not populating, and therefore defending, the frontier.  Iriarte and Salazar were among the most prolific Mexican lithographers and craftsmen of nineteenth-century Mexico (see Mathes, Mexico on Stone, pp. 63-65).  ($200-400)

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