Lot 367: Johann Christoph Ludwig Alberti; Zuid-Afrikaansche

Johann Christoph Ludwig Alberti; Zuid-Afrikaansche Gezeichten
GERMANY 1768-1812
Zuid-Afrikaansche Gezeichten
Otto Baron de Howen (fl 1808-1834) and Jacob Smies (1764-1833) artists
Amsterdam: E Maaskamp, [1811].Mounted on guards throughout. 1p. letterpress description of the plates with drophead title above. 4 fine hand-coloured aquatint plates by L.Portman after Howen and Smies, printed by E Maaskamp. 20th-century half vellum.
Amsterdam: E Maaskamp.[1811]
Broadsheet 57,8 by 45,2cm

PROVENANCE
FC Koch, Rotterdam (bookplate)
Christie's, London, Exploration and Travel, 17 September 1998, lot 76
A fine and very rare set of the "Alberti Prints" originally intended as an accompaniment to his De Kaffers aan de Zuidkust van Afrika
(Amsterdam: Maaskamp, 1810, 8°). Alberti "accompanied General J.W.Janssens when he preceded to the Cape as Governor of the Colony
under the Batavian Republic, in 1802. He was a captain in the Fifth Battalion of the "Corps de Waldeck," and in the following spring was
sent to Fort Frederick in Algoa Bay, where he [...] acted as landrost" (Mendelssohn I,p.18).
The original drawings were apparently made on the spot by Baron de Howen, worked up by Smies in Amsterdam and then engraved and
aquatinted by Portman. Otto, Baron de Howen was a Russian-born artillery officer, while Jacob Smies, known chiefly as a caricaturist,
was clearly employed here to give a professional polish to a gifted amateur's work. Kennedy A18-21; Mendelssohn I,pp.17-18.