[SUEZ CANAL] - Lot 240

[SUEZ CANAL] FONTANE Marius Album des Souverains. Voyage pittoresque à travers l'isthme de Suez, 25 aquarelles d'après nature par RIOU lithographiées en couleurs par CICERI [MOREL-FATIO ET DIDIER]. Paris, Dupond et Lachaud, [c.1870]. Broadside (580 mm x 400 mm approx.), publisher's purple and gold percaline, gilt irons on boards including coat of arms. Worn boards with minor discoloration and blemishes, spine and part of boards sunned, one book slightly unbound in-fine, a few small brown spots on margins and backs of plates, yellowed serpents and minor blemishes, as is. F. bl., faux-titre, frontispiece portrait of Ferdinand de Lesseps after the photographer Pierre Petit, title, color lithographed map, 100 pp. including preface and table and last f. bl. Twenty-five color plates interspersed in the text. ORIGINAL EDITION of 500 copies, of which the 200 reserved for Ismael Pacha were stripped of the portrait and Preface due to a disagreement between the khedive, viceroy of Egypt, and Lesseps. A monumental work, magnificently illustrated with watercolors by Édouard Riou during the festivities organized for the inauguration of the Suez Canal in October 1869. Fontane was Ferdinand de Lesseps' secretary. Complete with portrait and preface, which were therefore removed from a number of copies. Brunet VII, 510.