A Collection of Views Taken from Nature by Casimiro Castro

Album del Ferrocarril Mexicano. Coleccion de vistas pintadas del natural por Casimiro Castro, y ejecutadas en cromo-litografia por A. Sigogne, C. Castro, etc, con una descripcion del camino y de las regiones que recorre por Antonio Garcia Cubas. Texta Espanol. [And] Album of the Mexican Railway. A Collection of Views Taken from Nature by Casimiro Castro, Chromo-Lithographed by A. Sigogne, C. Castro, etc., with a Description of the Line and the Country through which it Passes. By Antonio Garcia Cubas. English Edition Translated from the Spanish by George F. Henderson. [Part 2: French title page and text in French] ] Album du Chemin de Fer Mexicain. Collection de vues peintes d'apres nature par Casimiro Castro, Par. A. Sigogne, C. Castro, Etc. Avec une description du chemin et des regions qu'il par Antonio Garcia Cubas. Texte Francais traduit de l'espagnol por G. Gostkowski.

Mexico City: Victor Debray & Co, 1877-[1878].

Price: $10,000.00


About the item

First edition. Part 1: [4], 1-56 pp. (letterpress text printed in double columns); Part 2: [2], 1-18 pp. (letterpress text printed in double columns), 25 chromolithograph plates (including illustrated title) printed by A. Sigogne, C. Castro, et al. after original artwork by Castro, plus map (see below). Oblong folio (35 x 49.5 cm). A Collection of Views Taken from Nature by Casimiro Castro. Original red textured pictorial cloth elaborately lettered in ebony black and gold, upper cover with large gilt-tooled illustration of a train, and lower cover with gilt-tooled scene of a train passing over a high, curving bridge, a.e.g., blue and white mottled endpapers. Palau 48628.

Item #319420

The plates include spectacular views of Veracruz, Orizaba, Puebla, and illustrations of stations, locomotives, freight and passenger trains, bridges and tunnels, etc. This glorious plate book, published the same year that Porfirio Díaz came to power, captures a pivotal moment in Mexican history, with its clashing images of powerful machines intruding into pristine, picturesque landscapes, heralding the evolution of a rural-agrarian world of “many Mexicos” to a unified modern technological society. Mathes, Mexico on Stone, pp. 41, 60 & Plates 11, 23, & 25: "Some of the finest examples of the lithographer's art during the latter part of the century.... Chromolithography by Debray y Cía of the work of Casimiro Castro and A. Sigogne illustrated Antonio.