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- Le Souvenir: F.G. CH. Picard. 1860.
Le Souvenir: F.G. CH. Picard. 1860.
Manuscript.
22.5 cm. 260 pp. of manuscript in two columns per page, with 7 full-page ink drawings, 21 smaller drawings, and 5 colored maps.
Price: $2500
F. Picard was a 19th century French illustrator and artist. There are few traces of him on the internet, most prominent of which is the record of a sale at auction of a watercolor entitled “Vue de la baie de Salonique, 1854” which was sold at the French auction house Desamais in 1991.
A couple of things are clear about him, however. He was a gifted draftsman and an inventive, if whimsical, storyteller. This 260-page manuscript is a collection of short informative essays, presented in no particular order, on world history, geography, natural history, technology, and travel, with short sections of dramatic dialogue featuring multiple actors, and extended biographical sketches of such characters as Daniel Boone, who merits 14 pages of text. Some of the topics covered are China, whales, Jerusalem, the Battle of Hastings, South Africa, hot air balloons and parachutes, marine animals, the Sahara Desert, an extended and illustrated tour through the South Pacific, and the aforementioned biographical sketch of Boone. With characteristic quirkiness, Picard’s final essay, headed “Guillaume-Tell,” simply stops, mid-paragraph – “Qui que du sois,” luidis-il “tremble que je ne punisse… And that’s the end of it – 260 pages of double column, exquisitely penned narrative, with nary a splotch, correction, or erasure! On the verso of the final page of text is a pen drawing of a leafy branch, making it clear that no further text was intended.
One of Picard’s few surviving works, this is a gem of a book, executed entirely and flawlessly in French, supported by high-quality ink drawings and colored maps. Bound in pebbled black cloth, unmarked. Front inner hinge cracked but holding.
