José María Tranquilino, The 19th-century Mexican polymath Francisco de Jesús Velasco Gómez Obregón, also called José María Velasco, was born in Temascalcingo on July 6, 1840, and died in Estado de México on August 26, 1912. He is best known for being a painter, having used his works to transform Mexican geography into a symbol of national identity. At the same time, he was one of the most well-liked musicians in the world. In addition to the gold medal from the Mexican National Expositions of Bellas Artes in 1874 and 1876, he also received medals from the Philadelphia International Exposition in 1876 commemorating the 100th anniversary of American independence, the Paris Universal Exposition in 1889 marking the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution’s start, and other honors. Velasco produced seven variations of El Valle de México, a picture that is regarded as his masterpiece. Velasco was the “first to be elevated in the post-Revolutionary period as an exemplar of nationalism” among all the painters of the nineteenth century.
Italian landscape professor Eugenio Landesio, who started teaching at the Academy of San Carlos in 1855, was Velasco’s mentor while he studied painting.Landesio developed Mexican landscape painting to a high art form and explained the compositional methods that he used in his paintings. Velasco is his most well-known student. After his mentor left in 1877, Velasco dominated Mexican landscape painting, achieved international acclaim, and had his works acquired by American collectors.
El Ahuehuete de Chapultepec, Las montañas de la Magadalena, La Alameda de México, El bosque de Jalapa, El Cedro de Chimalistac, and La Plaza de San Jacinto en San Ángel are among the locations of Velasco’s production throughout the academic years, which lasted from 1860 to 1889.
During his correspondence with French Impressionists, he created works such as Valle de Mexico desde el cerro de Atraeualco and Ajusco visto desde el Tepeyac between 1890 and 1892.
The personal era from 1892 to 1912 includes the following locations: Popocatepetl, Ixtlaciual, Templo de San Bernardo, Cascada de Necaxa, El Puente de Metlac, Rocas del cerro de Atzacoalco, and Pirámide del Sol in Teotihuacán.In 
In 1893, Velasco represented Mexico as a Commissioner for Fine Arts at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where he displayed seventeen of his own oil paintings.
Because of his passion in science, Velasco studied botany and zoology at the Academy of San Carlos, a local medical school. Prior to studying painting, he also studied mathematics, geology, and surveying. His observations were reported in the Mexican scientific magazine La Naturaleza (La Naturaleza 4: 216) in 1879, when he identified a new species of Ambystoma discovered in the Santa Isabel lake, north of Mexico City. Velasco Siredon Tigrina gave the new species its name. Ambystoma velasci (see also Plateau Tiger Salamander) was the new name given to the species in 1888 by Alfredo Dugès (1826–1910), who dedicated it to Velasco.
The monotypic genus Velascoa, which is a member of the Crossosomataceae family and is found in northeastern Mexico, was published in 1997 by botanists Calderón & Rzed. It was also given the José María Velasco Gómez name.
José María Velasco Gómez, “Hacienda of San Antonio Coapa.”
Mexican landscape painting gained international recognition thanks to Velasco’s lengthy career. As a gift to Pope Leo XIII, one of his landscapes of the Valley of Mexico is housed at the Vatican Museum. His views of the Mexican countryside serve as a visual resource for environmental historians, as they portray the Valley of Mexico before urbanization and air pollution caused its decline in the 20th century. His landscape paintings are more popular since they don’t require the viewer to comprehend a specific historical event, making them more approachable than historical paintings.
Velasco was born in the State of Mexico, and today the Mexican government honors painters born in that state with an award for artistic achievement named after him. Luis Nishizawa, Leopoldo Flores, Ignacio Barrios, and Héctor Cruz are a few of the more notable victors.
In order to preserve and promote his paintings, the José María Velasco Museum was established in Toluca in 1992.