Constructing the Sentiment of a Nation: Jesus Helguera’s The Legend of the Volcanoes in Perspective

Chromolithographic calendar artworks are an overlooked but vital aspect of Mexican art history. These commercial images became icons of nationhood, embodying Mexican ideals from the nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. Although chromolithographs constantly escape academic conversation due to their relegation as “kitsch”, their importance is found in how they came to embody ‘Mexican’ ideals beginning in the nineteenth century, reaching a zenith in the mid-twentieth century. Chromolithographs allowed art to flow into domestic spaces, furthering their impact and implicit messaging. Jesús Helguera's The Legend of the Volcanoes (1941) is a prime example of this phenomenon, as its reproduction as a chromolithograph on domestic calendars allowed it to become a catalyst for nationalistic sentimentality. This was aided in part due to the expansion of printing during the nineteenth century as well as emerging ideas of nationhood following independence. Drawing from a long artistic tradition and history of representation, I examine how Helguera fused aesthetics to create a sentimental, anthropomorphic approach to landscape and by, proxy the nation. Sentimentality, as an approach allows us to understand how the sentimental object (artwork) is produced and in turn, ‘produces’ the person who observes the work. Sentimentality here is a mechanism for constructing a ‘proper’ viewer, trained to ‘feel right’ and to ‘act right’—understood to be in the service of nationhood. As images harbor immense feelings, they become both affective and effective emotional tools of nation-building. Simultaneously, these chromolithographs instigated a shared experience of the passage of time, becoming a testimony to the permanence of a defined 'Mexican time'.