CHACTAS SEEKING THE GRAVES OF FATHER AUBRY AND ATALA 1885 ANTIQUE ENGRAVING

Original 9 5/8 inch x 7 1/2 inch Engraving titled CHACTAS SEEKING THE GRAVES OF FATHER AUBRY AND ATALA.

The Natchez Indian Chactas, years after the death of his beloved Atala, the half-caste Christian daughter of Simagan, and her religious adviser Father Aubry, searches for the remains of their graves.

Illustration by Gustave Doré (1832 - 1883). The most popular and successful French book illustrator of the middle of the 19th century. Doré became widely known for his illustrations to such books as Danté’s Inferno (1861), Don Quixote (1862), and the Bible (1866), and he helped to give European currency to the illustrated book of large format. He was so prolific that at one time he employed more than forty wood engravers. His work is characterized by an eclectic mix of Michelangelesque nudes, northern traditions of sublime landscape, and a highly spirited love of the grotesque and bizarre.

Engraved by Antoine-Alphée Piaud (1813 - 1867).

Chateaubriand was the giant of French literature in the early nineteenth century. Drawing on eighteenth-century English romanticists, on explorers in America, and on Goethe's Werther, he had a profound effect on French writers from Victor Hugo and Lamartine to George Sand and Flaubert. A quixotic and paradoxical personality, he combined impressive careers as a brilliant prose-poet, a spiritual guide, a high-ranking diplomat, and an enterprising lover. Atala, one of his best-known works, reflects his joys, aspirations, and despair, and the emerging tastes of a new era. Atala is the passionate and tragic love story of a young Indian couple wandering in the wilderness, enthralled by the beauties of nature.

Illustration for François-René de Chateaubriand’s “Atala” written in 1801 and illustrated by Doré in 1863.

This edition from Cassell’s ‘Doré Gallery’ published in 1885.

Page size 12 1/4 inch x 9 1/8 inch

The engraving is in very good condition. Reverse side blank.