BORGET Auguste Fragments d’un voyage autour du monde.

Borba de Moraes, t. I, pp. 112 ; Forbes, National Hawaiian Bibliography, t. II, n°1766.

First edition of this rare and very beautiful travel album.

It is illustrated with 12 plates drawn and lithographed in two tones by Auguste Borget, plus a lithographed composition on the title showing the sacred Ark of the Hindus, reproduced on the first board of the cartonnage. Issued from the presses of Pierre Antoine Desrosiers, the most important printer in Moulins at the time, the album seems to have been printed in small numbers. It is not listed by Sabin or Cordier and is missing from Abbey.

“This album is very rare and little known” (Borba de Moraes).

Born in Issoudun in the Val-de-Loire, Auguste Borget (1808-1877) was a close friend of Balzac and Zulma Carraud. A pupil of Boichard père and Théodore Gudin, he made his debut at the Salon of 1836, where he exhibited works he painted during his travels until 1859. In 1836, he embarked on a circumnavigation that took him from New York to India, through South America, China, Manila, Singapore, and the Straits of Malacca, and back to Paris in the summer of 1840. The plates represent the various places visited by Borget: windmills on the banks of the Hudson River, the church of Our Lady of Glory in Rio de Janeiro, a street in Buenos Aires, Argentina, another in Lima, Peru, a market in Canton, the beach in Honolulu, Hawaii, a bridge and a village near Manila, Philippines, etc. Each of them is accompanied by a sheet of an explanatory text.

“This is a very rare album of handsome and romantic views, from drawings made by the artist during his travels… This book appears to have been produced in a very limited edition and in a somewhat haphazard manner. Both the Kahn copy and the another example offered by Hordern House (1998) lack the letterpress descriptive sheet for plate 10” (Forbes).

A very good copy, complete with the explanatory leaflet for plate n°10, which is often missing.

List of plates : Moulin à Vent (Hudson) Notre Dame gloire (Rio de Janeiro) Rue de Buenos-Aires Ravin dans la Sierra de Cordova Rue à Lima (Pérou) Halte de Chiliens dans la plaine de Santiago Abreuvoir a Aréquipa (Pérou) Rue et marché à Canton (Chine) Plage d’Honoloulou à Oahou (Iles Sandwich) Balzas sur la côte de Bolivie Pont de village de Passig (Iles Philippines) Rue des Clives (Calcutta).