CHOISEUL-GOUFFIER M.-G.-F.-A. Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce

Blackmer, 342; Koç, 145 (third issue of the preface); Atabey, 241 (first issue of the preface); F. Barbier, Le Rêve grec de Monsieur de Choiseul. Les voyages d’un Européen des Lumières, Paris, 2010; Brunet, 1, 1847: “Le premier volume de cet συνταge, à l’époque où il parut pour la première fois, était incontestablement, sous le rapport de la gravure, la plus belle production en ce genre qu’on eût encore vue; aussi eut-il beaucoup de succès.”; Cohen-de Ricci, col. 238.

Second state of the preface, ending with the words Exoriare aliquis (see details by Koç and by Blackmer).

A passionate and refined archaeologist, Marie-Gabriel, comte de Choiseul-Gouffier (1752-1857) was the last ambassador of the French monarchy to the Sublime Porte. He was appointed in 1784. Refusing to return to France during the Revolution, he opposed the appointment of his successor for a year. The Republic put a price on his head and the Jacobins destroyed his collections. He had to seek refuge in Russia with his old adversary Catherine II. Paul I of Russia then appointed him director of the Academy of Fine Arts and the Imperial Library, before Talleyrand intervened to encourage his return to France in 1802.

Talleyrand, met at the Collège d’Harcourt, had been a dear friend during the heydays of the Ancien Régime. “Monsieur de Choiseul is the man I loved most,” wrote Talleyrand in his Memoirs. They had both shared many court intrigues. But it was in the entourage of his cousin the Duc de Choiseul that the talented Choiseul-Gouffier, a good draughtsman and cartographer, learned about Greece from Abbé Barthélémy, one of the pillars of Chanteloup, the famous château in Touraine where the Duc had been exiled. From April 1776 to January 1777, Choiseul-Gouffier sailed on the Atalante, a frigate captained by a prestigious sailor, the Marquis de Chabert, who was on a scientific mission:

“Choiseul-Gouffier, comme il sied pour un voyage à prétention scientifique, ne part pas seulement en compagnie de son valet de chambre, le fidèle Chartier: il est accompagné d’un secrétaire, l’ingénieur P. Kauffer, d’un architecte sorti de la nouvelle École des Ponts et Chaussées, J. Foucherot; d’ l’un dessinateur, Jean-Baptiste Hilair, qui le secondera jusqu’à la fin de sa vie” (B. Holtzmann).

Choiseul-Gouffier preferred the discovery of the Levant to the Grand Tour of the young English lords. He brought back an original philhellenic vision, envisaging the creation of an independent Greece on the Morea peninsula under Russian protection. The publication of the first volume earned him a place in the Académie. In 1784, he was appointed ambassador to the Sublime Porte from where he began a famous collection of antiques that made him the equal of Lord Elgin. Choiseul-Gouffier died in 1817 before the third part of his work, the second of which had appeared in 1809, saw the light of day. These last two volumes were innovative in content. The 1809 volume dealt with the Troad and Asia Minor, which were still little known at the time, while the last volume presented Turkey in a new light, with long passages devoted to the Dardanelles and Istanbul.

The illustrations, mainly by Moreau le jeune, A. de Saint-Aubin, Choffard, Huet, Monnet and the famous Louis-Sébastien-François Fauvel, comprise a total of 285 figures on 168 plates, some double-page and some folded, showing maps, plans, surveys, sites, costumes and so on. There are also 22 vignettes (head- and tail-pieces), two large fold-out maps, 3 engraved titles and a portrait of the author engraved by M.-F. Dien after Boilly. The typographical table, bound at page 184 of volume II contains the genealogy of the Dardannus family.

A choice copy comprising the first volume in a second printing. It contains the preliminary Discourse in twelve pages ending at the 22nd line. Written by Choiseul-Gouffier in collaboration with Chamfort, the very philhellenic and anti-turkish content of this Discourse had to be toned down after Choiseul-Gouffier’s appointment to the Constantinople embassy.

Plate 50 depicts the Battle of Tchesmé, won on 6 July 1770 by Count Alexiei Grigorievitch Orlov’s (1737-1807) Russian fleet against a vastly superior Turkish fleet. It was the greatest defeat suffered by the Ottoman Empire since the Battle of Lepanto. The Russian navy was now in control of the Aegean Sea, where it remained for five years. This Russian victory, on the same day as that of Larga and two weeks before that of Kagul, put Catherine II in a strong position for the peace negotiations ending the Russo-Turkish war.

Some occasional spotting, margins of a few rare plates slightly foxed, marginal paper loss on p. 12, plate 119 incorrectly bound after plate 116, plate 125 incorrectly numbered 126. A few rare leaves slightly toned in vol. 2. and vol. 3.

A magnificent copy, uniformly bound, untrimmed and with deckle edges preserved.