Voyage pittoresque autour du monde, avec des portraits de sauvages d'Amérique, d'Asie, d'Afrique, et des iles du Grand Ocean; des paysages, des vues maritimes, et plusieurs objets d'histoire naturelle; Accompagné de Descriptions par M. le Baron Cuvier, et M. A. de Chamisso, et d'Observations sur les crânes humains par M. le Docteur Gall. Par M. Louis Choris, Peintre BOUND WITH Vues et paysages des Régions Équinoxiales, recueillis dans un voyage autour du monde, par Louis Choris avec une introduction et un texte explicatif
THE DECKER–STREETER COPY
WITH ORIGINAL COLOR IN FULL
Voyage pittoresque autour du monde, avec des portraits de sauvages d’Amérique, d’Asie, d’Afrique, et des iles du Grand Ocean; des paysages, des vues maritimes, et plusieurs objets d’histoire naturelle; Accompagné de Descriptions par M. le Baron Cuvier, et M. A. de Chamisso, et d’Observations sur les crânes humains par M. le Docteur Gall. Par M. Louis Choris, Peintre. Paris: Firmin Didot, [1820–]1822[–1823?]. First edition.
bound with
Choris, Louis. Vues et paysages des Régions Équinoxiales, recueillis dans un voyage autour du monde, par Louis Choris avec une introduction et un texte explicatif. Paris: Paul Renouard, 1826[–1827]. First edition.
Folio (17” x 10 5/16”, 433mm x 262mm).
Voyage: binder’s blank, a2(+χ1) b2, 1-32 42(–42), 21(–211) 22-52, 31-22 332(–332) 3χ12, 41-62, 51-52 562(–562), 61-72, 71-52, 812 822(–822) [$1 signed; +b2, 1-22, 212, 322]. With 105 lithographed plates: a portrait frontispiece and 104 hand-colored plates (in 7 series[1]); and 5 in-text engravings of music.
Vues: π-2π2 1-82, binder’s blank [$1 signed]. 20 leaves, pp. [8] (half-title, blank, title, blank, dedication to Humboldt, blank, 2pp. dedication to Nicholas I of Russia), 1 2-32. With 25 lithographed plates: a pair of maps and 24 hand-colored plates; and a folding engraved map of the “Grand Océan” (Pacific) by Krusenstern.
In toto 130 lithographed plates (of which 128 are hand-colored) and a folding engraved map.
Bound in contemporary grey marbled boards backed in red sheep (re-backed, with the original back-strip laid down). On the spine, seven panels. Author and titles gilt to the second panel. Pale green end-papers. Top and bottom edges of the text-block untrimmed.
Re-backed, with the original back-strip laid down. Rubbed, with patches of wear at the edges. Fore-corners bumped, with some splitting. Mildly foxed and tanned throughout (with moderate patches). Lacking the list of subscribers and the directions to the binder, but with the uncommon second dedication in the Vues. Pll. IX and XIX of the Vues shaved at the bottom, just touching the captions. Tears and creases to the tissue-guards (pll. XVI and XXII in the Vues without). Graphite marginalia to pl. XX of the Vues. Bookplate of Frank S. Streeter to the front paste-down.
Louis Choris (Loggin or Ludwig, 1795-1828; the “Ch” fricative as in Bach) was born in Ukraine to German parents; his father taught at the newly-established Kharkiv University. After his parents died during his youth, the drawing teacher at the university fostered him and eventually brought him to Saint Petersburg. Trained in natural history painting in particular, Choris won the 1815 competition to join the voyage of Otto von Kotzebue, financed by Count Rumyantsev, aboard the Rurik. In addition to Kotzebue and Choris were Johann Friedrich Eschscholtz and Adelbert von Chamisso, the latter of whom published his own account of the journey. The Kotzebue expedition aimed to discover the Northwest Passage, and though it failed in that objective, its peregrinations through the oceans of the world made it one of the most consequential and celebrated voyages of the XIXc. Lada-Mocarski describes it as the fundamental work on Alaska, California and Hawaii; the voyage also records the Philippines, Easter Island and Chile. Choris’s views of Hawaii, before the death of Kamehameha I in 1819 and the abolition of “kapu” feudalism, are particularly valuable records of a vanished society.
Unusually, the fruits of the Rurik’s travels were not kept in Russia; von Chamisso brought the specimens to Berlin, and Choris took his drawings to Paris. There he worked with the lithographer Pierre Langlumé, protégé of Senefelder, as well as the naturalist Georges Cuvier and Franz Josef Gall, the founder of the pseudoscience of phrenology, viz. the study of the skull as an indicator of behavior or characteristic. Under the ægis of the publisher Firmin Didot, Choris published the Voyage pittoresque by subscription (188 sets) in 22 parts (livraisons) issued between 1820 and 1822 (with the final sheets issued in 1823, per Brunet and Howes), available both uncolored and, as here, colored. Barely twenty when the expedition began, and fresh from his academic training, Choris’s paintings — many now held at the Honolulu Museum and the Honolulu Academy of Arts — are lauded for their straightforward naturalism, rather than the idealizing or exoticizing so common in far-flung accounts.
Remaining in Paris, Choris brought out in 1826 a supplement of sorts, the Vues et paysages des régions equinoxiales, although the group of 24 views goes far beyond the equator. Published instead with Paul Renouard, this too was issued by subscription in 6 livraisons. The present example has the rare dedication to Nicholas I, dated 1827 — an important link to the Russian sponsorship of the expedition that had set off more than a decade previous. Although the Voyage is complete in itself, the rare addition of the Vues shows Choris’s full record of his time aboard the Rurik.
Peter Decker was one of the great Americana booksellers, on par with Lathrop Harper, Edward Eberstadt and Wright Howes. The present item was lot 102 in the 18 November 1969 Parke Bernet sale of his stock. Frank Sherwin Streeter (1918–2006) was the son of the legendary Americana collector Thomas W. Streeter, whose sale catalogue has become a reference work. Some of his collection he inherited from his father (those he did not he would often buy back), but other volumes he added over many decades until his death. The present work — lot 109 at his Christie’s New York sale 16 April 2007 (“Important navigation, Pacific voyages, cartography, science”) — is an instance in which son surpassed father, who owned the Voyage pittoresque (Streeter Sale IV.2461) but not the Vues.
Voyage: Forbes 541; Hill 290; Howes C 397; Lada-Mocarski 84; Sabin 12884.
Vues: Borba de Moraes I:180; Forbes 632; Lada-Mocarski 90; Sabin 12885.
[1] Numbered as follows — 1: I-III, V, 2V, VI-XI, 2XI; 2: I, 2I, III-X; 3: I-VIII, X, 2X, XI-XIV; 4: I, II, III-V, [ ], VI, VIII-VIII, X, IX, XI-XIX; 5: I-XIX; 6: X-III, V, 2V, VI-XIII, XV, XIV, XVI-XXIII; 7: I-VII.
Item #JLR0642
Price: $295,000