Background
He was baptized on the 5th of February, 1809, the son of Nicolás Rodríguez del Fierro, a priest, and a slave from the household of Nicolás" father, Don Antonio, a Colonel in the Militia Battalion.
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Pancho Fierro
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He had been manumitted upon his birth, following a rule that said no son of a Spaniard could be born a slave, but was raised by his mother"s family. There is no record of him receiving any artistic training, so he was probably self-taught. He also painted wall murals, all of which have been destroyed or covered over.
Today, he is remembered for his watercolors, painted on sign cards, depicting everyday scenes from Peruvian life.
He created over 1200 of them and their popularity produced many imitators. The writer Ricardo Palma owned a large collection which his heirs gave to the City of Lima.
They are now on display at the "Pinacoteca Municipal Ignacio Merino". The captions were provided by Palma, as Fierro may have been illiterate.
Other large collections were acquired by the French painter Léonce Angrand and the Russian ethnographer Leopold von Schrenck, whose collection is now at the "Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography" in the Kunstkamera, Saint St. Petersburg.
According to an obituary in El Comercio, he died of paralysis in a hospital on Peruvian Independence Day.
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Born
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Died
July 28, 1879 (aged 69) -
Nationality
Peru