KARLSKRONA NAVAL ARSENAL SWEDEN 1842 GAIMARD UNUSUAL ANTIQUE LITHOGRAPHIC VIEW

Description: Striking and highly detailed original lithographic view depicting the dry docks (called "Femfingerdockorna" or "the five fingers") at the Karlskrona Naval Arsenal, Sweden.
 
The scene depicts the shipbuilding and repair activity of the time; in the visible docks, ships such as the frigate Eugenie and the vessels Skandinavien and Stockholm were being built.
 
Karlskrona is a site known for its historic naval arsenal, which played a central role in Swedish maritime history.

Several inhabitans and sasiling ships adorn the view.

Source: Paul Gaimard. Voyages en Scandinavie, en Laponie, au Spitzberg et aux Feröe, pendant les années 1838, 1839, 1840 sur la corvette La Recherche, commandée par M. Fabvre. Par Xavier Marmier Publiés par ordre du roi, sous la direction de Paul Gaimard. Paris: Arthus Bertrand éditeur, 1842.

Date: 1842 ( undated )

Dimension: Paper size approx.: cm 59,9 x 43,5

Condition: Very strong and dark impression on japanese paper sticked on old original paper. Sheet uncolored. Corners partially missing. Small foxing and browning. Small moisture signs. Conditions are as you can see in the images. 

Authors: Xavier Marmier (22 June 1808 – 12 October 1892) was a French writer born in Pontarlier, in Doubs. He had a passion for travelling, and this he combined throughout his life with the production of literature. After journeying in Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands, he was attached in 1835 to the Arctic expedition of the Recherche; and after a couple of years at Rennes as professor of foreign literature, he visited (1842) Russia, (1845) Syria, (1846) Algeria, (1848–1849) North America and South America, and numerous volumes from his pen were the result. In 1870 he was elected to the Academy (Seat 31), and he was for many years prominently identified with the Sainte-Geneviève library. He did much to encourage the study of Scandinavian literature in France, publishing translations of Holberg, Oehlenschlager and others. He died in Paris in 1892.
 
Joseph Paul Gaimard (31 January 1793 – 10 December 1858) was a French naval surgeon and naturalist. Gaimard was born at Saint-Zacharie on January 31, 1793. He studied medicine at the naval medical school in Toulon, subsequently earning his qualifications as a naval surgeon. Along with Jean René Constant Quoy, he served as naturalist on the ships L'Uranie under Louis de Freycinet 1817–1820, and L'Astrolabe under Jules Dumont d'Urville 1826–1829. During this voyage they discovered the now extinct giant skink of Tonga, Tachygia microlepis. From his studies of cholera in Europe, he co-authored Du choléra-morbus en Russie, en Prusse et en Autriche, pendant les années 1831-1832 (Cholera morbus in Russia, Prussia and Austria in the years 1831 and 1832). He was the scientific leader on La Recherche (1835–1836) during its expedition to the Arctic Sea, making voyages to coastal Iceland and Greenland — from 27 April to 13 September 1835 and from 21 May to 26 September 1836. Along with exploratory and scientific goals, the crew of the expedition was asked to search for French explorer Jules de Blosseville, who had disappeared aboard the Lilloise in Arctic waters a few years earlier. Out of these trips came the 9-volume Voyage en Islande et au Groënland (8 text volumes, one of geographical illustrations), which was said at the time to be the definitive study of the islands. From 1838 to 1840, again aboard La Recherche, Gaimard was the leader of a scientific expedition to Lapland, Spitzbergen, and the Faroe Islands.
 
Artist: Auguste Étienne François Mayer (3 July 1805 – 22 September 1890) was a French painter and lithographer who specialized in marine art, especially ships and naval battles. He participated in several Arctic scientific expeditions and painted scenes from these expeditions. He first exhibited an oil painting at the Paris Salon in 1824 and continued to exhibit there regularly through 1869.
 
Mayer traveled in the Netherlands, Sweden, Iceland and Norway and toured Turkey and Egypt in the company of Adrien Dauzats and Isidore Taylor. He taught drawing at the École Navale, holding an appointment as a professor. He became a Chevalier in the Legion of Honour on 2 January 1839 and rose to Officer of the Legion in 1867. He was born in Brest in 1805 and died there in 1890..
 
Publisher: Arthus-Bertrand is a publisher who was located at 23 rue Hautefeuille in Paris in the first half of the 19th Century. In 1803, Claude Arthus-Bertrand (1770-1834) founded a bookstore and published numerous works such as Le Voyage ronde du monde by Louis Isidore Duperrey , thus becoming the official publisher of the Ministry of the Navy . Upon his death, his son Jean-Baptiste took over the publishing house. His grandson, also named Claude, married Marie-Adelina Marion in 1862, from the Marion embroidery house, and in 1870 moved his workshops, which took the name of Arthus-Bertrand, to the premises of the bookshop.