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One of Gentilz's better pieces (these pics here are all somewhat distorted to to the angle of the camera so as to avoid the flash).

Here showing the form of the two-wheeled Mexican cart. On this one the wheels have spokes, I dunno the proportion that had solid wheels.

Note also that Gentilz persistently paints somberos as taller and narrower than what we would expect today, or even compared to those in late Nineteenth Century photographs...



A street scene on market day. Until the coming of the railroad in 1877, lumber was in perennially short supply in San Antonio, and frame houses of sawn timbers something of a rareity.



Wood was also the fuel for cooking, and after a century of settlement also in short supply in the vicinity of town. There were those who made a living providing it for household fuel...



Another one of Gentilz's smaller pieces, a local horseman...




Gentilz paints his White guys in that setting in distinctly different wardrobes, of sorts instantly familiar from early daguerrotypes...



One of his more interesting works, this depicting the funeral on an infant. In theory at least, these were supposed to be less somber occasions, the child having died innocent and therefore having certainly gone straight to Heaven. Note the blue-painted coffin, perhaps symbolizing heaven, and the guys firing their firearms into the air.

Also note San Fernando Cathedral in the background, still there today.



Another San Antonio street scene. Accounts from wherever Americans of that era encountered Mexican Borderland communities from Texas to California mention the frequency of dances, fandangos and fetes of various sorts, and the popularity of these things with all parties one the scene.

I believe Gentilz entitled this one "Invitation to a Dance" or some such, his only work depicting a nighttime scene...


[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Sharpshin/hays19.jpg[/img]

Unfortunately what Gentilz does not give is are detailed portraits of the women. San Antonio even today is a fine place to be a young and single male, and historical figures as diverse as Kit Carson, Jim Bowie and William Bonney famously succumbed to the charms of the senoritas at different locations across the West. Even Santa Anna "married" a local girl in a staged wedding (one of his officers pretending to be a priest) during the Alamo siege.

Doubtless the availability of such company and the lively night life was a major part of the appeal of the place to the sort of footloose young men who comprised the early ranging companies. In later decades the rapidly dwindling Texano community in San Antonio would be mostly supplanted in this regards by a large and notorious red light district "west of the creek", San Pedro Creek.

Birdwatcher