L'Art Arabe

'L'Art Arabe d'après les Monuments du Kaire Depuis le VIIe Siècle jusqu'à la fin du XVIIIe', 1877 by Émile Prisse d'Avennes at NYPL. More than two hundred plates. Sublime.


"'L'art Arabe', a rare collection of breathtaking set of plates (wood engraving, heliogravures and color lithographs) of the famous Islamic-Arab designs and ornaments published by the French art historian Prisse d'Avennes sometime during 1869 after buying them from the sixty or so French artists who accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte on his compaign against Egypt in 1798. Those selective group of artists were assigned by the Emperor to illustrate the art treasures of rare architectural ornament (tiles, wood carvings, paintings on walls and ceilings, woven hangings), carpets, paper appliques and illuminated books.

After the failure of the Emperor's campaign, those artist dispersed in the Arab land, each to his devices, depicting in overwhelming illustrations the riches of the Islamic Arab east. It took Prisse d'Avennes more than twenty years to collect those masterpieces and then to publish them in exquisite plates with incredible accuracy, stating that his principal goal was to furnish exciting visual ideas to decorative artists of his own day.

Prisse d'Avennes published the collection in three volumes, which constituted a grammar of Islamic decorative art in its authentic color unmatched except on the walls of Alhambra palace in Granada and some of the mosques of Cairo and Damascus." [source]

• Biography of Achille Constant Théodore Émile Prisse d’Avennes (mirror) [et en Français]
• ArtServe at the Australian National University has a large number of Prisse d'Avennes plates available in large format (at least some of these are derived from 'L'Art Arabe']
• Books by Prisse d'Avennes at Amazon
• Previously related.
  

This post comes circuitously via Archivalia who advised of the efforts of the Cardiff Heritage Friends in Wales to prevent the fire-sale of the Cardiff Public Library's rare book collection. The latest news is encouraging. {Prisse is mentioned as one the authors}

UPDATE: The International School of Information Science has the whole of 'L'art Arabe' available in a flash website [info. about the project]. Nb. I couldn't get this site to work in FFox with the Flashblock plugin, but I got it to work in Chrome. {thanks Sonia!}