Art

A very pretty view in which a group of travellers relax in the shade of a tree, some smoking hookahs. Their weapons are laid on the ground in front of them, and their horses graze behind them. In the background is the town they are heading towards. In 1776 Choiseul-Gouffier and the artist J.B. Hilaire joined a cartographic survey of the Mediterranean. Volume I of Voyage Pittoresque, his account of their tour of the Greek islands, the coast of Asia Minor, and of his travels on the mainland, was immediately acclaimed on publication in 1778. According to Brunet, it was incontestably the most beautiful production of this kind seen until then. Choiseul-Gouffier's work offered for the first time, illustrations of remote places that complemented the scrupulously researched narrative. Copper engraving. Later colour. Size: 37 x 25.5 cm. (14½ x 10 inches)