[Candle seller]

Barefoot Afro-descendant man, with blue pants and over his white shirt he has a gray poncho with vertical lines. He also has a red scarf tied around his head and a short, rounded white hat. In his left hand he has a cane and in his right, an elongated wooden stick that supports on his shoulders, from which candles hang in groups.
In the evenings in the city, this character advertised the sale of tallow candles, which he hung from a long stick resting on his shoulders. The candles were bought to illuminate the main rooms of the houses, and in the shops to be able to work at night. In the mid-1850s, gas lighting appeared. Inscription: "’Sailboat’ oder talglicht verkaufer".
It belongs to the album "1871 Praetoria" which contains 39 sheets of which 25 are watercolors and the remaining 14 illuminated lithographs. These images are an example of the nineteenth-century production of pictorial costumbrismo in Peru, a repertoire of typical characters -in this case from the city of Lima-, composed without much context, and rather characterized by their work and clothing.