Native of Vanikoro, Antique Wahlen Costume Print, 1843-1844

An original antique wood engraving of a native of Vanikoro in Oceania, an ethnographic costume print from Auguste Wahlen's Moeurs, usages et costumes de tous les peuples du monde, published in Brussels between 1843 and 1844. The plate is lettered "Naturel de Vanikoro (Océanie.)". Vanikoro lies in the Santa Cruz group, in what is now the Solomon Islands, and it held a particular place in French memory because the expedition of La Perouse was wrecked there in 1788. The search for traces of that expedition brought French ships back to the island in the 1820s and 1830s, Dumont d'Urville's voyages among them, and it is from that body of drawings and published accounts that several of the Vanikoro plates in this part of the series are believed to descend. A Brussels compiler of the 1840s was therefore working from material only recently in print.

Moeurs, usages et costumes de tous les peuples du monde was published in Brussels by Auguste Wahlen at the Librairie Historique-Artistique between 1843 and 1844. The four volumes set out to describe the dress, customs, occupations and social divisions of the peoples of Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania, drawing on travel narratives, earlier costume books and other sources then treated as authoritative, and they carried approximately one hundred and ninety to two hundred plates, the count varying between copies and editions.

Wahlen was the publisher and compiler rather than the artist; where a name such as Duverger, Pannemaker, Mercier, Lisbet, Markaert or Vermorcken appears on a sheet it belongs to the illustrator or the engraver, and no artist is attributed here without one.

The plates are wood engravings on paper. The images should be read as a nineteenth century European interpretation of the cultures they show rather than as a documentary record, which is a large part of what makes the series interesting to historians of the period. The sheet is uncolored, as issued, and the wood engraving prints with the crisp line and even tone that suits a simple mount and a plain frame. Plates from this series group well, and a set of four or six drawn from the Oceania section hangs better together than a single sheet on its own.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light toning, a few small creases at the right edge and a small marginal spot; the image is clean and strong.

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