Imperial Guards and Soldiers of Cochinchine, Voyage Plate, circa 1835

An original antique copper engraving with hand color showing the soldiers of Cochinchine, the French name for southern Vietnam, in two scenes printed on one sheet under the heading "COCHINCHINE." The left scene is captioned "Soldats de la Garde de l'Empereur" and the right "Soldats de l'Armee". Both show groups of men in long tunics and conical lacquered hats, carrying long spears and muskets over the shoulder, standing and walking in open country with hills behind them. The artist has drawn most of them from behind, so the cut of the tunics, the sashes and the way the weapons were carried are recorded in a detail that a frontal view would have lost. The hand color picks out the tunics, the sashes and the hats.

The sheet is lettered "Paris del." at the lower left, "de Sainson Edit." below the left scene and "Fouet sculp" at the lower right, with a further engraver's line that reads as "Hondy sculp" or similar, and it is numbered as plate 54. It is an original copper engraving with hand color, probably issued in a French voyage atlas of the 1830s; no published title is named on the sheet and none is claimed here. Francois Edmond Paris and Louis Auguste de Sainson were both French naval voyage artists of the 1820s and 1830s, and the printing is believed to be Parisian.

French naval officers of the 1820s and 1830s made the first careful European drawings of Vietnamese dress and military equipment, and plates of this kind are the main visual source for what the Nguyen emperors' guards actually looked like before photography reached the region. The sheet is lettered "Paris del.", which is Francois Edmond Paris, the French naval officer and artist, and "de Sainson Edit.", naming Louis Auguste de Sainson as its publisher; both men were voyage artists of the period, and the plate is probably from an atlas of that kind. Costume and military subjects like this suit a hallway or a study, and the two scenes on one sheet make it unusually good value for a single frame.

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

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