Item #4202828 La Marine au XIXe siècle par Lebreton… dessinateur du voyage autour du monde du C. Amiral Dumont-Durville. Louis LE BRETON.
La Marine au XIXe siècle par Lebreton… dessinateur du voyage autour du monde du C. Amiral Dumont-Durville.
La Marine au XIXe siècle par Lebreton… dessinateur du voyage autour du monde du C. Amiral Dumont-Durville.

La Marine au XIXe siècle par Lebreton…
La Marine au XIXe siècle par Lebreton… dessinateur du voyage autour du monde du C. Amiral Dumont-Durville.

Paris: Théodore Lefèvre, circa 1856.

Oblong album measuring 245 x 335 mm., title-page and twelve tinted plates, fine in original decorated papered boards.

Marine lithographs by Dumont d'Urville's artist

A particularly attractive French lithographic album of marine scenes by a seasoned voyage artist. As the title boasts, Louis Le Breton served as artist on Dumont d'Urville's second voyage to the Pacific and Antarctic during 1837-1840. He was taken on in 1837 as assistant surgeon on board the Astrolabe. Since he showed a talent for drawing, Ernest Goupil, the official artist on board, took him under his wing and began to train him as a painter. When illness struck the crew of both ships in 1838, Goupil became one of the victims, dying in January 1840 in Hobart Town. Dumont d'Urville then appointed Le Breton as the expedition's artist; on their return to Paris the drawings of both Goupil and Le Breton were used for the magnificent lithographs in the huge publication of the official account of the voyage.

A particularly attractive French lithographic album of marine scenes by a seasoned voyage artist. As the title boasts, Louis Le Breton served as artist on Dumont d'Urville's second voyage to the Pacific and Antarctic during 1837-1840. He was taken on in 1837 as assistant surgeon on board the Astrolabe. Since he showed a talent for drawing, Ernest Goupil, the official artist on board, took him under his wing and began to train him as a painter. When illness struck the crew of both ships in 1838, Goupil became one of the victims, dying in January 1840 in Hobart Town. Dumont d'Urville then appointed Le Breton as the expedition's artist; on their return to Paris the drawings of both Goupil and Le Breton were used for the magnificent lithographs in the huge publication of the official account of the voyage.

From 1845 to 1847 Le Breton took part in an expedition to Madagascar, and thereafter devoted himself to depicting marine subjects for the French Navy, specialising -- as here -- in lithographs depicting naval forces, ships and boats, sea landscapes and ports. He transferred to the Department of Maps and Charts in Paris, where he remained until his death in 1866.

The album comprises thirteen lithographic plates, including the romantic pictorial title-page depicting mariners wrecked upon the rocks. Five scenes depict the French and British at sea during Crimean War engagements of 1854; namely Friedland in consort with a British warship entering the Bosphorus, the arrival of the Anglo-French fleet at Kalamita, bombarding the defences of Sevastopol, and the British gunboat Agamemnon tackling a gale in Sevastopol harbour. The last Crimean lithograph is an especially dramatic rendition of the port of Balaclava viewed from the clifftops with archaic ruins in the foreground. Other marine scenes of interest include Galilée, a fully rigged naval paddle-steamer, Brasilian clipper l'Impératrice rounding the Cape, an American barque at La Havre and the enormous gunboat Napoleon half rigged, resting at anchor.

Polak, 5516, noting only 10 plates.

Condition Report: Rear cover moderately rubbed, touch of foxing affects the preliminaries.

Price (AUD): $3,750.00

US$2,443.37   Other currencies

Ref: #4202828

Condition Report