Viaje pintoresco alrededor de la Isla de Cuba
[Mialhe, Toussaint Frédéric. Viaje pintoresco alrededor de la Isla de Cuba. Havana: L. Marquier, 1847–1848.]
Oblong quarto (11 9/16” x 16 ½”, 294mm x 419mm). With 18 tinted lithographs.
Bound in contemporary half red diced sheep over maroon pebbled cloth.
Worn, with chipping and losses at the tail. The front board starting at the tail. Scuffed and bumped generally. Internally tanned, with passages of foxing — particularly marginally. Chips and creasing to the tissue-guards of plates 10 and 13.
Toussaint Frédéric Mialhe (sometimes with an added “Pierre,” perhaps because of his connection to lithographic stones; hispanized to “Federico,” 1810–1881) was a Bordelais painter-lithographer who lived in Cuba from 1839 to 1854. While there, he came to direct the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro (founded 1818, one of the oldest educational establishments in Latin America). The Real Sociedad Patriótica commissioned from in the late 1830’s a series of views that would shine the best light on the island.
Mialhe was the most famous of a group of French viewmakers working Havana; his 1839-1842 Isla de Cuba pintoresca (i.e., seen through a painter’s eyes) was the first work of “costumbrismo” (scenes of daily life, often through a Romanticist lens) produced in Cuba. The overall suite of as many as fifty-three images (though usually far fewer) provided the basis for many subsequent publications, including piracies. The present volume is a rare assemblage of eighteen (of a generally cited thirty; plates were sold singly as well as in groups; there is no indication of removal from the present volume) of Mialhe’s tinted lithographs, issued by his authorized publisher Louis Marquier. Below is a list of the plates (with the typical order in parentheses):
1 (2): Vista de la Habana. Tomada desde la entrada del puerto (Num.o 1)
2 (1): Morro y entrada del puerto de la Habana.
3 (4): Habana 1ª Vista tomada desde Casa-Blanca
4 (5): Habana 2ª Vista tomada desde Casa-Blanca
5 (6): Habana 3ª Vista tomada desde Casa-Blanca
6 (8): Puertas de Monserrate Habana
7 (9): Teatro de Tacon y parte del paseo de Isabel II.
8 (10): Habana Vista general del paseo de Isabel II. (No 1.)
9 (12): Vista del fondo de la Bahia de la Habana Tomada del paseo de Roncali
10 (3): Vista de la Habana, parte de estramuros, Tomada desde la entrada del Puerto.
11 (7): Plaza de Armas. (Habana)
12 (11): Alameda de Paula (Habana)
13 (13): El Quitrin. (Habana)
14 (16): Valla de gallos Habana
15 (18): El Zapateado.
16 (14): El panadero y el malojero (Habana)
17 (15): El casero (Habana)
18 (17): Dia de reyes (Habana.)
Far more common were the piracies — offered at half the price — by Bernardo May, who published them in Berlin (home of lithography) and shipped them out to the West. The Viaje (or Viage) has come to auction just four times per Rare Book Hub.
Item #JLR0852
Price: $14,000