The opening of the Suez Canal, with 37 large lithographs, mostly in colour 1870

Gustave Nicole

InkPaperWatercolourLeather
55.50 ⨯ 40 cm
Currently unavailable via Gallerease

• About the artwork
  NICOLE, Gustave.
  Inauguration du Canal du Suez - Voyage des Souverains ... aquarelles d'après nature et portraits par Riou.
  [Paris, Lemercier & Cie., 1870]. With 17 lithographs on 16 plates (14 tinted or double-tinted and 11 partly coloured by hand).
  With: (2) FONTANE, Marius. Voyage pittoresque à travers l'Isthme de Suez, vingt-cinq grandes aquarelles d'après nature par Riou.
  Paris, Paul Dupont & E. Lachaud, [1870]. With coloured map and 20 chromolithographic plates. This issue always lacks pp. 77-100 and plates 21-25. 2 works in 1 volume. Imperial folio (55.5 x 40 cm). Contemporary red half morocco, gold-tooled spine, richly gold-tooled cloth sides with the arms of Ismail Pasha.
  
  First edition of the chronicle of the elaborate festivities given for the inauguration of the Suez Canal (Qanat al-Suwais), opened in November 1869 after ten years of construction work - an event attended by the most prestigious occidental figures, finely illustrated by Riou, the Khedive's official painter.
  The painter Riou also signed the plates of the second work: a detailed account of the canal construction by Marius Fontane, secretary to Lesseps. 500 copies of Fontane's work were printed, with 200 reserved for the Khedive Ismail, of which this is one. As the Khedive objected to the preface of Fontane's work, which gave credit for the canal to Lesseps, he had the relevant parts removed: the frontispiece portrait of Lesseps, the preface and the final six quires (included the accompanying plates 21-25).
  Plates slightly foxed, otherwise in very good condition.
  Ad1: Blackmer 1198, 611; Heritage Library, Islamic treasures, s. v. "Art"; ad 2: cf. Ibrahim-Hilmy I, p. 235; Gay 2439.
• About the artist
  Gustave Nicole was a French author in the 19th century. In 1869 the work 'Voyage des souverains: Inauguration du Canal de Suez'was published. Little more is known about this author.