Album Pintoresco de la Isla de Cuba
A PRESENTATION COPY TO
THE CONDESA de SAN ANTONIO
THE FIRST FIRST LADY OF SPAIN
[Mialhe, Toussaint Frédéric.] Berlin: Storch & Kamer for Bernardo May, ca. 1855.
Oblong quarto (9 7/16” x 13 9/16”, 241mm x 345mm): with 27 chromolithographed plates and 2 folding lithographed maps.
Bound in the publisher’s de luxe presentation binding of rose velvet gilt. On the front board, the title gilt with foliate scrollwork within an elaborate foliate border. On the rear board, “Condesa de San Antonio.” Gilt within the same border. Watered white silk end-papers. All edges of the text-block gilt.
Sunned, particularly at the spine. A small white spot above the “n” of Pintoresco on the front cover. Rubbing at the edges of the velvet, as expected. Small splits at the head and tail. Remarkably clean internally, with the tissue-guards (a few loose, torn or creased) taking most of the foxing, with the exception of pl. 21, “Cercanias de Baracoa.” Stub-tear to the map of Cuba.
Toussaint Frédéric Mialhe (sometimes with an added “Pierre,” perhaps because of his connection to lithographic stones (pierres in French); 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. Bernardo May, a Berlin lithographic publisher, pirated the work, selling the images for less than half what Mialhe and his Havana publisher Louis Marquier charged. Mialhe and May sued May for copyright but were unsuccessful; May argued that “after all, ladies in carriages, street sellers, churches, monuments, and landscapes were all there in full view to any artist who cared to paint them” and continued to publish, changing from tinted lithographs to chromolithographs.
The volume was presented by the publisher to Antonia Domínguez y Borrell, condesa de San Antonio and duquesa de la Torre (1831–1917). The countess (suo jure) was born in Havana and married her cousin Francisco Serrano Domínguez, who would in 1874 become the first President of the Spanish Republic. The couple, however, lived in Cuba from 1859 to 1862, when Domínguez was Captain General of Cuba; doubtless the German publisher’s gift to the Cuban-born first lady of Cuba was a blow to Mialhe and Marquier. The countess was influential in politics, and had a close relationship with Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III.
The volume was sold by the eminent bookseller Lathrop Harper 19 February 1960 to Jacques Levy (for a staggering $500). Levy (1905–1980) was a steady collector of books from around 1940 until his death, with particular focus on illustrated views and travel. Born in Istanbul, he spent most of his life in New York, where the Central Park West home he shared with his wife, the artist Margot Semac, was entirely subsumed by his book collection. The present volume was lot 233 in the Sotheby’s New York sale of his library, 20 April 2012.
Cueto, Mialhe’s Colonial Cuba pp. 1-7 and 73-77; Palau 5421; Sabin 17748.
Item #JLR0853
Price: $11,000