Port Jervis and Kangaroo Island, Antique Wahlen Costume Print, 1843-1844

An original antique wood engraving carrying two Australian subjects on one sheet, a native of Port Jervis and women of Kangaroo Island, 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 du Port Jervis / Femmes de l'isle des Kanguroos (Océanie.)". L'isle des Kanguroos is Kangaroo Island, off the coast of South Australia, which the plate letters in the older French form; Port Jervis is probably Jervis Bay in New South Wales, though the identification is not certain and the French spelling is not consistent in the sources. Both places were known to Europe chiefly through the survey voyages of Baudin and Flinders at the beginning of the century, and a Brussels compiler of the 1840s was working at some remove from them. Two subjects on a single sheet is a useful economy for a collector, since the plate covers more ground than most in the series.

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 uncoloured, 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, small chips along the left edge and a pencil numeral in the margin; the image itself is clean and strong.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.