Sketches in San Antonio, the fandango [on full sheet]; Main plaza, San Antonio, Texas; Mission of Concepcion, New Mexico

What you are looking at

This is a composite print showing three scenes from Texas and Mexico, rendered in wood-engraving style typical of 19th-century illustrated newspapers. The upper image depicts an indoor dance scene—the fandango—with couples and musicians in a crowded room with exposed ceiling beams. Women wear long dresses with full skirts; men are in period coats. A guitarist and other musicians occupy one corner while dancers occupy the center and sides of the room, their bodies angled in the social proximity of partnered dance. The middle image shows the Main Plaza in San Antonio with military or civic gathering, buildings, and figures dispersed across a public square. The lower image is an architectural study of the Mission of Concepción in New Mexico, showing the church facade with its distinctive twin towers and surrounding grounds. The three scenes are integrated into a single newspaper page with letterpress text columns flanking and separating them.

The dancing

In the fandango scene, the dancers hold each other at moderate distance in what appears to be a closed or semi-closed frame typical of the period. The men's posture is upright; the women's full skirts create a broad silhouette. Arms are positioned at the sides or waist rather than extended. The positioning suggests social dance rather than theatrical performance—dancers are interspersed with standing observers, and the musicians sit rather than stand. The engraving technique renders body weight and movement as outline and shadow rather than anatomical detail, which limits precision about footwork.

The dance depicted

The upper scene is labeled 'the fandango,' a Spanish social dance that became popular in North America during the 19th century, particularly in territories with Spanish colonial heritage such as Texas and New Mexico. The fandango is typically performed by couples in moderate-to-close hold with rotational movement and rhythmic footwork. This image shows it as a social ballroom dance in an indoor setting with musicians, consistent with how the fandango was danced in frontier North American communities of the period. The dress and setting suggest 1850s or 1860s, when Anglo American travelers and settlers first documented fandango dancing in the Southwest.

How it was made

This is a wood engraving—a relief printing technique in which an image is carved into the end-grain surface of a boxwood block, with printed lines appearing as the raised surface. The fine parallel lines (hatching) create tone and shadow. This technique was the dominant method for newspaper and magazine illustration in the 19th century because it could be set alongside letterpress type and printed on the same press. The skill visible here—particularly in the rendering of fabric, faces, and spatial depth—indicates professional newspaper illustration. Wood engravings were often unsigned and created for weekly publications with large circulations.

About this work

This page from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper documents the fandango as it was danced in Anglo-American Texas during the 1850s–1860s. The fandango was a Spanish social dance that persisted in newly conquered or settled territories and became a point of fascination and sometimes moral anxiety in American journalism. The print situates the fandango within a documentary project—shown alongside architectural and geographic views of the region—that treats it as part of the cultural and social landscape of the frontier. For dancers and historians, it is evidence of how this dance was actually performed in its moment: indoors, in mixed social company, with live musicians, in dress and posture that differs from later theatrical fandango.

How to look at it

Notice the spatial arrangement of the dancers relative to the musicians and observers. The artist has chosen to show the dance in progress but not in a moment of high elevation or dramatic gesture—the figures are grounded and engaged in partnered rotation. The room itself is crowded and informal; this is not a ball in a grand ballroom but a local gathering. The women's skirts are full but not exaggerated (as they would be in a later burlesque or theatrical treatment of the fandango). Look at how the artist differentiated the dancers from the onlookers—the dancers are in the center, the musicians to one side, and a cluster of figures stand or sit around the perimeter. This spatial logic reflects the actual social organization of dance in frontier communities.

The period

Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, founded in 1855, was one of the first mass-circulation American weeklies to feature wood-engraved illustrations integrated with news reporting. Such publications brought images of distant American territories and their peoples into middle-class homes nationwide. The fandango was a subject of recurring interest in American journalism and literature of the 1850s–1870s, often presented as both exotic and morally questionable. The dance was associated with Spanish and Mexican culture, and reports often carried ambivalence about both the sensuality of the dance itself and the cultural difference it represented. By the 1860s, the fandango had also begun to appear in theatrical contexts, but this image captures it in its social, non-theatrical form.

Where it lives

The work is from the New York Public Library's collection of prints depicting dance, sourced from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. The page integrates three separate scenes of Texas and Mexican sites and culture into a single newspaper article, suggesting this was part of a longer series on American frontier territories.

Dance in this work

Questions about this work