Oh! To live the life of a Valois princeling and his bride. Watercolors by architectural watercolorist Tavernier de Jonquières (Brice Tavernier) who lived from 1742 to some time after 1830.
Category: Drawings and sketches
Somewhere up on the Bosphorus. What is now Istanbul in Turkey but was then Constantinople and was ruled by the Ottoman Turks. Imagery from the 1840 work “Beauties of the Bosphorus.”Miss Julia Pardoe, author, with engravings after drawings by William Henry Bartlett.
Very early for this type of work, from right after Victoria became queen. Julia Pardoe wrote at least two other books on Ottoman Turkish topics. She traveled to what is now Turkey in 1835 with her father. Her Wikipedia entry doesn’t say when she left but she died in London, England from insomnia and liver issues in 1862.
Also, I didn’t find this book by myself. Like the last blog post about touring Scotland in 1907, I found it here https://www.kaaterskillbooks.com/ and then found a scanned version on the Internet Archive website.
Tour Scotland the Edwardian way. Imagery from the 1907 guidebook titled “The Royal Route. Summer Tours in the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland by the Royal Mail Steamers, “Columba,” “Iona,” &c. of David MacBrayne, Ltd.”
I wish I could say I found this great guidebook and its pictures by myself which happens often enough. But I found it here https://www.kaaterskillbooks.com/pages/books/28226/david-macbrayne/the-royal-route-summer-tours-in-the-western-highlands-and-islands-of-scotland-by-the-royal-mail and then went looking for a scanned version.
Design work by Luigi Valadier. Living from 1726 to 1785, he was Rome’s best known silversmith for quite a while. I don’t know if these designs were used in actual pieces. I just know that they are not the design sketches used for some of his actual pieces which are in a different blog post here.
Watermark: fleur-de-lis in shield, surmounted by crown, (Strasbourg lily). Collections of the Morgan Library and Museum. Image © Morgan Library and Museum. Artwork itself in the public domain due to age. https://www.themorgan.org/drawings/item/142939
(Rome 1726-1785). https://www.carlovirgilio.it/en/opera/atelier-of-luigi-valadier-head-of-a-boar/
Costume sketches from mid 19th century productions of the opéra bouffe “La belle Hélène,” which has music by Jacques Offenbach and words by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. Collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
And I thank whoever put the article about the premiere of La Belle Hélène on Wikipedia as that is where I found the full names of most of the actors.
Visions of the Elephant of the Bastille, a colossal elephant fountain designed to the orders of the Emperor Napoleon and built in 1813. Designed by architect Jean Antoine Alavoine working with architect Pierre-Charles Bridan, the elephant was originally going to have a cast-bronze skin but ended up in plaster so it only lasted until 1846, not forever.
Projet de la fontaine monumentale surmontée d’un éléphant. Taken from a dummy (sic) album, cardboard covered with brown vat paper, with red leather corners and spine. Folio 7. French. ca. 1813. Watercolor with pen and gray ink lines and traces of graphite. Jean Antoine Alavoine, artist (1776-1834). Image © GrandPalaisRmn. Artwork itself in the public domain due to age. Collections of the
Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques, INV 23521, Recto.
– https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl020009390 – https://collections.louvre.fr/CGU
Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques, INV 23522, Recto – https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl020009391 – https://collections.louvre.fr/CGU
Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques, Paris. https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl020009392
Projet de fontaine pour la place de la Bastille, the engraved inscription reading Project for a fountain for the Place de la Bastille composed by J. A. Alavoine, under the direction of Baron Denon. – The model of the elephant was executed to the size of the monument by Mr. Bridan, statuary during the years 1813-1814′ Taken from a dummy (sic) album, cardboard covered with brown vat paper, with red leather corners and spine. ca. 1813. French. Folio 5. Etching with watercolor. Jean Antoine Alavoine, artist (1776-1834). Image © GrandPalaisRmn. Artwork itself in the public domain due to age. Collections of the Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques, Paris. https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl020500365
Dreaming the day away hoping for better decor ideas and the parlor in need of something. 1870s watercolors of the homes of the creatively famous including Sarah Bernhardt’s. Marie-Désirée Bourgoin, artist (1839–1912).
Part of the 19th century artistic fashion trend that involved hiring watercolorists to paint portraits of the rooms in your home. There are other posts in this blog with examples showing spaces in Romanov and other aristocratic Russian interiors along with others of Windsor Castle and Prince Albert’s childhood home that were commissioned by Queen Victoria. And some earlier ones of the Prince Regent’s Brighton Pavilion with its fun palm tree frond tops on the columns in the kitchen.
Costumes for chorus girls back when they were a bit more covered up. Taken from a ca. 1940 Maharam “The House of Service” catalogue. They had locations in New York City and Chicago.
https://archive.pinupmagazine.org/articles/gogo-graham-and-sharifa-morris-maharam A fun article with many illustrations showing how one of today’s costume designers got inspired by Maharam’s old catalogues.
“For Style and Fit Call at the Golden Eagle Clothing House, Minneapolis, Minnesota.” Business trade cards made to look like painter’s palettes each with its own little scene. From a Minnesota archive.
Party with the finest like there is no tomorrow. 1920s costume designs from the archives of the Wiener Werkstätte designed by Mathilde Flögl (1893-1958). Collections of the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) Museum, Vienna.
