FREDERICK CATHERWOOD 151 FIG. 15 (left): Interior of the Principal Building at Kabáh. Plate 17 from Frederick Catherwood, Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, London, 1844. Image courtesy of the Mortimer Rare Book Room, Neilson Library, Smith College. FIG. 16 (below): Casa del Gobernador, Uxmal. Nine-panel gatefold frontispiece engraving after Catherwood from John L. Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, New York, 1843, vol. I. C. 23 x 130.5 cm. ruins, and then paid a visit to Quiriguá, despite having been infected with malaria. Stephens and Catherwood then went to Palenque, where they stayed for a month before moving on to Uxmal. Catherwood’s health fi nally failed there and they returned to New York. Catherwood had several artists create engravings from his renderings, and these were used to illustrate Stephens’ account of the expedition, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, which was released in 1841 (fi g. 4). The engravings were rushed and some are more effective than others, but they form a powerful visual counterpoint to Stephens’ engaging text. It became an immediate best-seller, despite the then high price of fi ve dollars for the two-volume set. Stephens and Catherwood sailed again for Central America on October 9, 1841. Embarking on a far more thorough survey of Maya sites than their previous trip had allowed, they resumed their work at Uxmal and subsequently visited a remarkable forty-three other sites, including Mayapan, Chichen Itza, Tulum, and Izamal. The trip was rigorous and the entire party suffered health issues, though in his writings Stephens commented frequently on Catherwood’s perseverance, creating detailed technical drawings in harsh conditions despite fever, malaria, and insect attacks. They departed for New York on May 18, 1842, and staged an exhibition in the SoHo Rotunda of the Maya artifacts that they had collected along with Catherwood’s renderings from both expeditions. Tragically, the building was destroyed by fi re in late July, with a total loss of everything inside, including almost all of Catherwood’s drawings and paintings. Fortunately, the process of creating engravings had already begun. The results were published in Stephens’ 1843 Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, which, like the previous book, was a resounding success. They had planned to create a more visually oriented folio but failed to fi nd a publisher to support the project. In 1844, Catherwood himself published a reduced version under the title Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan. This included twentyfi ve plates by six different lithographers working under Catherwood’s supervision. Only 300 copies were produced. Catherwood briefl y returned to work as an architect in New York before taking jobs supervising railroad construction in South and Central America, in part aided by Stephens, who had coincidentally become involved in the same fi eld. Struck down again by malaria, he left for San Francisco in 1850 to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the California Gold Rush. He returned to England in 1852 to deal with business, which included new editions of Stephens’ books, and on September 20, 1854, had the misfortune of boarding the SS Arctic bound for New York. The ship sank off the coast of Newfoundland. There were only eightyfi ve survivors, the majority of them crewmembers. Catherwood was not among them. In his collaboration with Stephens, Catherwood left an enduring visual record of Maya civilization. While they “discovered” little, since most of the sites they visited were already well known to the local population, who lived around and sometimes in them, their work formed a fi rm basis for later developments in the fi eld and served to greatly enhance popular interest in the ancient cultures of Central America. Their experience in Egypt and the Middle East allowed them to recognize that there was no direct connection between the cultures of the Old World and those of the New, and that the latter stood on their own terms among the great civilizations of antiquity.
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