Art

A pair of engravings - the top showing a group of travellers with their horses resting by the imposing mountain at St. Etienne. The bottom engraving shows details of two classical statues, a colonnade and part of a tomb. 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. Uncoloured. Size: 22.5 x 33.5 cm. (9 x 13 inches)