[Viennese engravings]. Souvenirs de Vienne.

[Vienna], 1830.

Oblong folio (400 x 320 mm). 93 pp. A privately compiled album comprising 138 engravings, either full-page or as four smaller engravings to one leaf, mostly hand-coloured. Includes one watercolour, signed "Fedor Comte Karaczay, Wien 1822". All mounted on brown paper with black borders, mostly with manuscript captions in French and watermarks to tissue guards. Contemporary red morocco, finely decorated with gilt borders; gilt title to upper cover, metal clasp fastening with key. Green silk guards.

 28.000,00

A charming album comprising numerous views of Vienna's grand buildings, palaces, and parks as well as landscapes of the surrounding areas. Notable sites of the Austrian capital are depicted in all their splendour, including Klosterneuburg monastery, the Kohlmarkt, St Stephen's Cathedral, and the Circus Gymnasticus in the Prater park.

Landscape views of Leopoldsberg, the route to Mariazell, and the nearby spa town of Baden are presented in all their idyllic majesty, as are lively social scenes of the Habsburg Empire's carnivals and café culture. The ensemble also includes 13 plates of professions and three military figures, one of which is a watercolour by Fedor Graf Karaczay (1787-1859), an Austrian colonel and dilettante artist, later in Persian services. The occupations include lantern lighter, laundry woman and hawkers selling brushes, apples and honey, straw hats, ribbons, carpets and laurel leaves.

Some minor staining. Tissue guards and covers somewhat worn, but otherwise a fine work.