Views in Egypt.

R.[obert] Bowyer, London, 1801

First edition of this splendid work with views of Egypt. An attractive copy of Thomas Milton’s engravings from Mayer’s original drawings commissioned by Robert Ainslie.

Description: Contemporary calf, with 6 raised bands decorated with gilt double fillet ruling, gilt title on gilt-tooled label. Marbled endpapers. Folio: 48 × 34 cm; [2]ll., 102pp., [1]ll. With 48 aquatints in colour, dated 1801–1803.

Ref.: Abbey, Travel: 369P; Blackmer: 1097

Condition: Covers somewhat scratched and bumbed. Internally slightly browned, 1 leaf with repaired tear in the outer margin.

Notes: The prints are from a series of 96 aquatints first published separately in 1801, 1802, and 1803 for Sir Robert Ainslie (1730[?]–1812), ambassador to Constantinople from 1776 to 1792, where he also studied ancient architecture and collected ancient coins.

Luigi Mayer (1755–1803) was a German-Italian painter. Born in Rome, he was a pupil of the famous engraver J.B. Piranesi and worked for Ferdinand, King of Naples, producing paintings of the antiquities of Sicily. Later, probably from 1776, he was in Istanbul and belonged to the circle of Sir R. Ainslie, the British ambassador to the Sublime Porte (1776–1792). From then on, the ambassador financed Mayer’s travels so that the artist could draw and paint the sights of the Ottoman Empire, especially the antiquities.

The engraver of the aquatints, Thomas Milton (1743–1827), studied under William Woollett and was praised by the scholar W. Bell Scott as having “a unique power of distinguishing the foliage of trees and the texture of bodies, especially water, as it never had been done before, and never will be done again”.