Meretseger Books

Panorama d'Egypte et de Nubie

HOREAU Hector

Item #M6899a

Possibly a unique copy. 2nd edition, in a smaller format (wide in-4) of the 1841 elephant folio. Lefebvre, Paris, ca. 1860. This edition is so rare that we haven't been able to locate any other copy worldwide. Folio, 1 leave of text, 28 plates with 48 photographic reproductions of the original engravings related to Egypt, with the addition of one which was not in the original edition (Vue des Colosses d'Amenophis III). Contemporary hardcover, no text, only a first (detached) page listing the photographs. Plates are slightly ondulated, otherwise a fine copy.
Hector Horeau was trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts between 1819 and 1822, and was a student in the ateliers of E. Ch. Nepveu and F. Debret. From 1821, he first worked as an illustrator and amongst his commissions was drawing the plates for F. Cailliaud’s “Voyage a Meroe (1826-7)”. In 1825 he received his first commission as an architect, and architecture remained his main interest and occupation for the rest of his life, working on both private and public projects in France and England.
During the first part of his life he travelled extensively around Europe (Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, England, Russia and Sweden) and Egypt. In Egypt, 1837-39, he visited the entire country including Nubia. From Alexandria he went to Cairo, explored the site of Giza, hired a boat to Luxor and went up the Nile to Abu Simbel. To achieve the beautiful illustrations of the book, he mentions in the subscription bulletin that “drawings made on site and the benevolent communications of daguerreotype views, have allowed me to achieve great accuracy in the reproduction of the wonders of the Nile Valley”. Indeed, he met the photographer Pierre-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière at Thebes, from whom he ordered daguerreotypes, and from which he produced his drawings, in addition to those taken on site. His interest in Egypt lay in both its ancient monuments and the modern country and its people, and it would stay with him for the rest of his life, as shown by his work “L’Avenir du Caire au Point de Vue de l’Edilite et de la Civilisation”, published two years before his death, in 1870. Language: French. Relevant subjects: Egypt: Medieval & Modern Egypt.

Language: French.

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