Album Pintoresco de la Isla de Cuba - photo 1
Album Pintoresco de la Isla de Cuba - photo 2

Album Pintoresco de la Isla de Cuba

Lot 59
16.06.2023 16:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Sold
$ 2 772
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
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Archive
ID 965087
Lot 59 | Album Pintoresco de la Isla de Cuba
Estimate value
$ 2 000 – 3 000
Album Pintoresco de la Isla de Cuba
Bernardo May after Pierre Mialhe, c.1855
MIALHE, Pierre Toussaint Frédéric (1810-1889). Album Pintoresco de la Isla de Cuba. Berlin: Bernardo May y Co., [c.1855].

Scarce album of brilliant chromolithographs of Cuba after the work of the island's master lithographer. "Havana in the early nineteenth century was a city of extraordinary wealth and culture. Although a Spanish colony, the elite of Cuba looked entirely to France for the luxuries. One aspect of this Francophile sophistication was a talented community of lithographers made up almost entirely of emigrant Parisian workmen. Mialhe, perhaps the foremost of these, produced a series of viewbooks of the island in a variety of formats after he moved there in 1836" (America Pictured to the Life). Bernardo May copied the views in the present work from Mialhe's lithographs printed by Louis Marquier for his extensive series Viage pintoresco al rededor de la Isla de Cuba (Havana, 1847-1848) and sold them in competition with Mialhe's originals at less than half the price. This resulted in Mialhe and Marquier suing May for copyright violation in November 1853; May denied plagiarism and escaped the charge on a technicality. Following that lawsuit, May reissued the prints in this set of 27 attractive chromolithographs. Sabin 17748; Palau 5421. See America Pictured to the Life 16 (Miahle's originals) and Cueto, Mialhe's Colonial Cuba, pp.1-7, 73-77.

Oblong quarto (242 x 340mm). Chromolithographed title page heightened with gold and 27 plates with printed captions, most with tissue guards, folding map of Cuba and folding plan of Havana (occasional spotting around margins of plates). Contemporary embossed green cloth with title gilt on upper board (spine sympathetically repaired); modern cloth clamshell box. Provenance: Miss Julia Mellon (inscription noting gift of W. Fuguet dated 1861).Pierre Toussaint Frederic Miahle
Cuba
Place of origin:Western Europe, Cuba, Germany, Europe
Auction house category:Printed books
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16.06.2023
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