An Album of Sketches and Drawings Around the World Owned by a French Lady of Court.

£1,850 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

A pleasantly bound album of watercolours and drawings including African landscapes, South American subjects, flora and fauna, English country houses and country side, and portraits, as collected by a French lady of wealth as she travelled around the globe. Perhaps most interesting are the four portraits of Colombian and South American subjects. The first is captioned as being 'The Head Keeper of Suacha Manor' and dated Bogotá, 1829. 'Suacha' (Soacha) now stands as one of the southern suburbs of Bogotá, but in 1829 it would have stood outside the city as a relatively wealthy country estate. This was also very shortly before the collapse of Bolívar's Gran Colombia and depicts the inhabitants of Colombia during a time of unrest. There are also several people in traditional dress, as well as a starving man in the wild. Two of the paintings of England are signed by George James Rowe (1804-1888) and are likely originals by him. In 1826 he would have been just 22 and establishing himself in Norfolk as an artist alongside his friend Thomas Churchyard (1798-1865), although it is a mystery how his originals came to be in this album. One of them is directly painted to the page, rather than being mounted, with several others of similar English countryside unsigned alongside, making it highly likely the owner of the book met Rowe in person, perhaps being interested in learning drawing as a pupil. One of the portraits within might well be a self-portrait of Lady Szeliski, or a portrait of

• Binding: Hardcover

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