Vues et types du Sénégal. Recueil de 17 aquarelles inédites signées

Unpublished manuscript comprising 17 original signed and captioned watercolours executed in 1873 by a certain A. Poquet, an illustrator whose name has not been traced in the principal artists' dictionaries. The work announced on the calligraphic title page, Vues et types du Sénégal (Views and Types of Senegal), appears never to have been published; these watercolours almost certainly constitute the original maquette, or preparatory artwork, intended for its illustration.

The volume comprises a calligraphic title leaf, with a table of plates on the verso, followed by thirteen leaves on which the seventeen watercolours are mounted, one or two to a page, measuring either 9.5 × 21 cm or 16 × 9 cm. Only thirteen bear contemporary manuscript captions: Dagana, Richard-Toll, Fort de Bakel, Princesse Mauresse et Maure Orfèvre des Trarzas, Type et coiffure de Malinkés, Homme et Femme Bambara, Femme Peule et Femme Mandingue, Jeune Maure Darmenkour et Femme Wolof portant son enfant, Palmier ronier, Deuxième barrage au-dessus du Félou, Montagnes de Maka Gnian, Vue de Koundian and Poste de Dabou.

Extending from Dagana to Koundian in Upper Senegal, now Mali, they form a remarkable pictorial survey of the landscapes, peoples and settlements lining the Senegal River valley.

Quarto (31 × 20.5 cm). Contemporary-style half red shagreen over marbled boards, raised bands, gilt rules, modern binding; restored marginal tear to the final watercolour. On the title page, the name of the first owner, Bérenger-Féraud, has been crossed through in pencil.

This was Laurent Jean Baptiste Bérenger-Féraud (1832–1900), naval surgeon and ethnologist, appointed head of the Senegal colonial medical service in 1872 before returning to Toulon as Chief Medical Officer and, in 1875, assuming the same position in Martinique.

 Although best known for his extensive medical writings on tropical diseases, he also published several important studies on West Africa, notably Les peuplades de la Sénégambie (Paris, Ernest Leroux, 1879), which includes, among other subjects, a study of the Wolof people. The presence of his name on the title page, together with the date of 1873, coinciding with his return to France, suggests that this remarkable group may have belonged to him personally, perhaps preserved as a souvenir of his years in Senegal, although no documentary evidence permits this provenance to be established with certainty.

A unique survival, very probably from the library of Bérenger-Féraud, offering a rare visual record of the Senegal River valley at the dawn of the Third Republic. To the documentary value of these watercolours is added the particular interest of an unpublished editorial project, of which this preparatory maquette appears to be the only surviving witness.