| Art Encyclopedia: Carlos Enrique Pellegrini |
(b Chamb?ry, Savoie, 28 July 1800; d Buenos Aires, 12 Oct 1875). Argentine painter, draughtsman, lithographer and engineer of French birth. His father was Italian and his mother French. He received a diploma in engineering in Paris in 1825, and in 1827 he was contracted as a hydraulic engineer by Juan Larrea, the Argentine charg? d'affaires in Paris, on behalf of Bernardino Rivadavia, the first Argentine president (1826-7). Pellegrini sailed to Montevideo, Uruguay, in January 1828 but was unable to disembark in Buenos Aires because the port was blockaded by the Brazilian fleet. He remained in Montevideo, where he was hired to design fortifications for the city and its surrounding areas. When he finally reached Buenos Aires in November 1828, political events prevented him from executing the project for which he had been contracted. In letters to his brother and friends in France he included watercolour views of Buenos Aires, in which he graphically and unselfconsciously documented a period of Argentinian life distinct from that previously illustrated by Emeric Essex Vidal. He went on to produce paintings of the four sides of the Plaza de la Victoria, of the cathedral, the old and new poultry markets, meat and fish salthouses, slaughterhouses, churches, street scenes with popular characters, watersellers, soldiers, policemen, travelling salesmen and elegant men and women, documenting architectural and urban themes, as in the Great Arch of the Poultry Market and Temple of S Francisco (watercolour, 215*170 mm, 1829; Buenos Aires, Mus. N. B.A.).
See the Abbreviations for further details.
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