An exhibition of works by the 19th-century artist shows his role in creating a sense of Mexican identity – revealing that he was more polymath than painter

Due to the longstanding political and territorial anxieties that emanate from the border between Mexico and the US, both countries often choose to define themselves in terms of their relationship to the other. We mostly get to see the American side of this ever evolving story, but a new exhibition at the National Gallery in London gives a rare opportunity to examine a Mexican perspective on its own terrain, and by implication on that of its neighbour.

Before Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo developed and exported their 20th-century Mexican aesthetics, there was José María Velasco (1840-1912), who produced a body of landscape paintings that was widely regarded as integral to the creation of a Mexican identity and nationhood.