Prisse d’Avennes, Arab Art

In 1848/1851 Prisse d'Avennes published his Oriental Album in London (Oriental Album. Characters, Costumes, and Modes of Life, the Valley of the Nile). This brilliant collection of 32 chromolithographs illustrating the people and costumes of the Nile Valley was accompanied by a commentary by renowned Orientalist and Egyptologist James Augustus St. John. After again travelling to North Africa, Prisse d'Avennes returned to France in 1860, bearing the fruits of his journeys--hundreds of folio drawings, photographs, sketches, plans and 400 meters of bas-reliefs. Fascinated by the symmetry, complexity, and opulence of Egyptian and Arabic art, he drew from this vast collection to create compilations of the finest examples of art and architecture, which also took into account historical, social, and religious contexts. In 1877, he published his outstanding survey on Islamic art and architecture, Arab Art (L'Art arabe d'après les monuments du Kaire, 1869-1877), in Paris. The three atlas volumes contain 200 plates--137 of them magnificent chromolithographs--mainly by Prisse d'Avennes, and a quarto volume of text with numerous beautiful illustrations. L'Art arabe is an indispensable compendium on the development of Arabic art, portraying its splendor and diversity, and a work of supreme draftsmanship.