[CONSTANTINOPLE] Exceptionnel Album de 54 caricatures originales

[CONSTANTINOPLE] Exceptional album of 54 original caricatures, some captioned, executed in India ink, pencil and watercolour, together with three small pencil drawings on loose leaves. Undated [circa 1872-1873]. Small oblong folio, 47 pp., 40.5 x 27.9 cm. Contemporary overlapping ivory vellum, smooth spine with red rules, a tear at the head of the spine skilfully restored, red fillet border to the boards, a few stains to the covers, comb-marbled endpapers, red edges.

Almost certainly compiled by a talented amateur, this engaging and highly personal album recounts the adventures and misadventures of a small circle of recurring figures, apparently connected, directly or indirectly, with the French Embassy to the Sublime Porte. A fragment of stationery bearing the printed heading « Ambassade de France » [“French Embassy”], inserted between two leaves, further supports this provenance.

The opening scenes take the reader to Florence in September 1872, before continuing in Rome during November and December of the same year. Among the subjects depicted are the Temple of Vesta, an ancient arena humorously transformed into an allusion to the Roman circus games (« Ave Cesar » [“Hail Caesar”]), evenings at the theatre, walks on the Capitoline Hill and outings on horseback, as well as a large panoramic watercolour satirising the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and its principal protagonists. The autograph captions lend these lively scenes the character of an illustrated chronicle, in which travel, private amusement and social satire are deftly interwoven.

The small company portrayed in Rome includes the vicomtes de Bresson, de Mareuil, d'Hauterive and d'Hérisson, General de Castelbajac and Baron de Talleyrand. The album also preserves an autograph letter signed in black ink, embellished in the margins with pen-and-ink caricatures, addressed to « Monsieur H. Fournier » [“Mr H. Fournier”] and opening with the playful salutation « Cher Washington n°2 » [“Dear Washington No. 2”]. A finely executed pencil portrait is identified as depicting Khalil Bey.

The Vicomte de Bresson may be identified with considerable confidence as Paul Alfred, Vicomte de Bresson (1834-1904), then secretary to the French Embassy in Rome, precisely at the time when the scenes recorded in the album took place. He would later pursue a distinguished diplomatic career, serving successively in Brussels, Madrid, Belgrade and Switzerland.

The recipient of the satirical letter appears to be Hugues Marie Henri Fournier (1821-1898), who would later become the 53rd French Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, being appointed on 31 December 1877.

The pencil portrait accompanying this material is identified in the album as Khalil Bey (1831-1879), the celebrated Ottoman diplomat and statesman, born in Cairo and appointed ambassador to Vienna in 1868, before returning to Constantinople in 1872 to marry the Egyptian princess Nazli Fazl.

Khalil Bey's name has endured chiefly through his extraordinary collection of paintings, dispersed at auction in Paris on 16 January 1868 in order to settle his gambling debts. It included, among other masterpieces, Gustave Courbet's L'Origine du monde  and Le Sommeil, Ingres' Le Bain turc , and Delacroix's L'Assassinat de l'évêque de Liège - works now preserved in the Musée d'Orsay, the Petit Palais and the Louvre.

A rare illustrated record of French diplomatic circles during the closing years of the Second Empire and the early Third Republic, this album brings together travel recollections, political satire and a chronicle of society, while casting new light on several figures who would play a notable part in relations between France and the Ottoman Empire.