Unknown Unknown — An Exquisite Album of Original Watercolour Miniatures of Italy, Germany and France. English, ca 1850.[THE GRAND TOUR]

An Exquisite Album of Original Watercolour Miniatures of Italy, Germany and France. English, ca 1850.[THE GRAND TOUR]

Oblong folio (5 2/8 x 8 2/8 inches). 35 EXCEPTIONALLY FINE ORIGINAL WATERCOLOURS, each image 2 x 2 7/8 inches, mounted and captioned in manuscript. Original tan diced calf, each cover elaborately decorated in blind, with embossed with carnelian jewelled silver mounted initials "F S" on the front cover and carnelian and silver decorated gold clasp and catch (hinges strengthened). A fine album of exquisitely rendered miniature views, by an artist of some talent and schooled in the Romantic tradition, recording the most popular tourist sites of the mid-nineteenth century. Including six intricately detailed views of Rome, seven of iconic views of Venice, one each of Naples and Sorrento, and two of Milan and of the Italian lakes. Insbruck, Munich, Dresden, and Strasbourg are followed by three scenes in Paris, and others of Tours, Avignon and Aix-en-Provence. The British fascination with travel to continental Europe began in the Georgian period with the institution of the Grand Tour. A nobleman's education was not considered complete without first-hand experience of the monuments and antiquities of ancient Italy, complementing his knowledge of Greek and Latin texts. As the classical scholar Conyers Middleton stated in 1729, "At our setting out through France, the pleasures that we find, like those of our youth, are of the gay fluttering kind, which grow by degrees, as we advance towards Italy, more solid, manly, and rational, but attain not their full perfection until we reach Rome." Later in the century, as the archaeological sites at Herculaneum and Pompeii were excavated, the Tour extended far south of Naples. The desire for European travel continued well into the Victorian period and now was not just the luxury of the aristocracy but also of the middle classes. This was mainly facilitated by the development of the railways allowing for much easier mobility. The Georgian obsession with Classicism was replaced by the Romantic movement, which emphasized a deepened appreciation of the beauties of nature and a general exaltation of emotion over reason and of the senses over intellect. Once again, travel through France, Germany and Italy provided scholars and artists with inspiration and indeed, the great poets Percy Shelley and Lord Byron were to travel to the Italian lakes, Florence, Rome and many other sites between 1818 and 1822.

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