Hindu Widow Walking to Her Husband's Pyre, Antique Sonnerat Plate, 1806

This original antique copper engraving, Plate 15 from Sonnerat's Voyage aux Indes Orientales et a la Chine, shows a Hindu widow walking in procession to the funeral pyre of her husband, attended by musicians, brahmins and a crowd, with the pyre and a temple beyond. Beneath the image the sheet is lettered INDIENNE ALLANT SE BRULER AVEC LE CORPS DE SON ÉPOUX., with P. Sonnerat pinx. at the lower left and Poisson sculp. at the lower right, and the plate number 15 at the upper right.

The sheet comes from the Collection de planches pour servir au Voyage aux Indes Orientales et a la Chine, the plate volume issued in Paris by Dentu, Imprimeur-Libraire of the quai des Augustins, in 1806. The plates were engraved on copper after drawings Pierre Sonnerat made in the field between 1774 and 1781, while he served the French crown as a naval commissary at Yanam and Pondicherry and traveled on from India to China, Malacca, Madagascar and the Cape of Good Hope. It is an original copperplate engraving, printed from the intaglio plate onto laid paper. The engraved plate number stands at the upper right, the artist and engraver credits run along the foot of the image and the caption is lettered beneath. The sheet is uncolored, as the plate volume was issued.

The plates of Indian life are the part of Sonnerat's work that collectors look for first. He recorded the trades, the tools, the ceremonies and the religion of the Tamil country at a moment when very few Europeans were doing so with any care, and he did it without the condescension that runs through most travel books of his century. The working plates in particular are a straightforward record of how things were made. The sheet is the one plate from the volume that people remember. Sonnerat witnessed the rite in the Tamil country and drew it as a procession rather than as a spectacle, which is why the plate is reproduced so often in histories of the period.

Light uneven toning, browner towards the edges. Marked handling soiling along all four edges. Scattered light foxing in the margin. All four corners complete.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.