Warrior of the Sandwich Islands, Antique Wahlen Costume Print, 1843-1844

An original antique wood engraving of a warrior of the Sandwich Islands, 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 “Guerrier des iles Sandwich”. The Sandwich Islands is the nineteenth century European name for Hawaii. The wars by which Kamehameha the First brought most of the group under a single rule at the turn of the century were still recent history when this series appeared, and the Hawaiian warrior, with his feather work and his standing among the chiefly class, was one of the images of the Pacific most firmly fixed in the European imagination through the published accounts of Cook's third voyage and of the expeditions that followed it.

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. This impression is uncoloured. Hawaiian subjects are among the more sought after plates in the series, and this one is a useful document of how the kingdom was pictured in Europe a few decades before annexation. The sheet suits a study, a library or a room given a Pacific theme, and this ethnographic print makes an obvious pair with the queen of the Sandwich Islands from the same volumes, or the start of a group of Wahlen costume prints of Oceania.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with slight fraying at the left edge and faint marginal soiling; the portrait 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.