The Painted Voyage : Art, Travel, and Exploration, 1564-1875

London: British Museum Press, 1995. New unread copy in a Very Near Fine dust jacket (only very lightly rubbed). NO chips. NO tears. NO creases. NOT price clipped (£20.00). Bright, shiny, clean, square, and tight. Sharp corners. Oversize hardcover. 8.75" wide by 11" tall. NO owner's name or bookplate. NO remainder mark. Pages are fresh and crisp -- obviously never read. NO underlining. NO highlighting. NO margin notes. Lavishly illustrated with 106 illustrations including 64 in striking full-color. Until the development of portable cameras in the late nineteenth century, artists routinely accompanied voyages of discovery, colonization, exploration, science, and diplomacy. This is a wide-ranging study of artistic works from these voyages and the artists who created them. It also looks at how that art influenced western impressions of newly discovered areas. Chapters include: "The World of the Orientalist," "India," "The Far East," "The South Pacific," "America," and "The Heart of Africa and the Polar Regions." Bibliography. Index. Bound in the original pale blue boards, lettered in shiny gold on the spine. From the Dust Jacket: "From Patagonia to Peking, the South Seas to the Sahara, western artists have played a vital if little recognized role in the exposure of remote and unfamiliar lands. From Jacques Le Moyne's involvement in the French attempt to settle the coast of Florida in 1564 to the development of portable cameras in the late nineteenth century, artists were a habitual feature of explorational, scientific and diplomatic voyages. The works of these travelling artists were at first appreciated more for their scientific value than for artistic merit. By the eighteenth century, however, painters such as William Hodges -- who accompanied Captain Cook on the second of his Pacific voyages -- began to regard exotic journeys as an alternative educational experience to the European Grand Tour. With the nineteenth-century fashion for Orientalism, represented by artists such as Delacroix and David Roberts, adventurous travel and great art were no longer regarded as mutually exclusive. THE PAINTED VOYAGE looks at the ways in which traveling artists influenced early western attitudes towards distant lands, and examines how far the artist's own vision of these places was a distorted one, affected by factors as diverse as changing artistic fashions, the demands of colonial propaganda and the frequent need to work from memory… The extensive illustrations form a fascinating and entertaining visual record of the lands visited and include a large number of undeservedly little-known works. Michael Jacob's lively, good-humoured text contains a wealth of anecdotes relating to the adventures of these intrepid figures and the peculiar difficulties with which they were faced when travelling beyond the well-trodden path -- difficulties which ranged from being mistaken for spies to offending local religious sensibilities. The extensive illustrations form a fascinating and entertaining visual record of the lands visited and include a large number of undeservedly little-known works.". First Edition. Oversize Hardcover. New/Very Near Fine jacket. 160pp. Great Packaging, Fast Shipping.