George Glazer Gallery - Antique Prints - French Pyrenees Mountain Views, Antoine Ignace Melling

George Glazer Gallery, Antiques, Antiquarian Globes, Maps and Prints, New York City

French Pyrenees Views, 1826-30
Antoine Ignace Melling

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Below: Four details from the prints.

Antoine Ignace Melling (1763-1831) (after)
Benedikt Piringer (1780-1826), Friedrich Salathé (1793-1858) and N. Gibele (engravers)
French Pyrenees Views
from Voyage Pittoresque dans les Pyrénées Françaises et les Départements Adjacents
[Picturesque Travels in the French Pyrenees and the Adjacent Areas]
Treuttel and Wurtz, Paris: 1826-30
Hand-colored aquatints
10 x 14.25 inches image, average approximate
12 x 16.5 inches platemark, average approximate
16.5 x 22.5 inches overall, average approximate
$350 each

Selection of aquatints from a set of picturesque landscape views of the Pyrenees mountain range in France showing mountains, waterfalls, hot springs, spas, villages and chateaus, at locations such as Bigorre, Cauteretz and Mirepoix. In 1821, Antoine Ignace Melling was sent by the French government to document the Pyrenees and demonstrate that their natural beauty rivaled that of the Alps. These fine aquatints were based on Melling’s sepia sketches. They are among 72 that were originally issued together with text by Joseph Antoine Cervini.

Antoine Ignace (Anton Ignaz) Melling was a German-born painter, draftsman, and architect active in France. Born to a family of artists, he was a pupil of his uncle, Joseph Melling, and at age 19 accompanied a diplomatic delegation to Italy, Egypt and finally Constantinople, where he settled and spent 18 years as Imperial Architect in the Ottoman court. Arriving in Paris in 1803, he published a collection of prints, Voyage Pittoresque de Constantinople et des Rives du Bosphor (1809-19), which led to his appointment as landscape painter to the Empress Josephine. He later served as a painter in the court of Louis XVIII. Melling exhibited in the Paris Salon from 1804 to 1824, winning a medal in 1810. In 1821, the French government commissioned a series of landscapes published as a series of aquatints in Voyage Pittoresque dans les Pyrénées (1826-30). Melling was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1825. Today, his drawings, prints and watercolors are in prominent French museums, including the Louvre and Versailles.

Benedikt Piringer was a German artist. Friedrich Salathé was a Swiss painter and draftsman.

Condition: Generally very good with the usual overall toning, wear, soft creases. Margins with various minor scattered short tears, foxing, chipped edges, which can be matted out when framed.

References:

“Antoine Ignace Melling.” Wikipedia. 19 May 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Ignace_Melling (21 May 2009).

Bénézit, E. Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs. France: Librairie Gründ, 1966. Vol. 6 p. 49.

Brunet, Jacques-Charles. Manuel du Libraire et de l'Amateur de Livres. Berlin: Josef Altmann, 1922 (reprint). III 1591-92.

Graesse, Jean George Théodore. Trésor de Livres Rares et Précieux ou Nouveau Dictionnaire Bibliographique 1-8. Milan & New York: Görlich, 1950. IV 473.