Revisiting Albert Tissandier

Tlingit Indian Houses at Killisnoo, Alaska

Tlingit Amulets

Hotel Banff, Alaska

View of Tlingit Chief's House

Houses at the Rear of Westminster Avenue, Vancouver

I checked an inbound google translation link today and in addition to concluding that I sound much more sophisticated in italian (not being able to actually read italian assists with this delusion), I was reminded to go back and examine the other half of the Albert Tissandier collection at the University of Utah. [the original post] The breadth of the collection and the quality of (most of) the work makes it deserving of another post to my mind.

Tissandier's drawings and etchings were produced during a number of cross country trips made in North America in the late 1880s and early 1890s and many were published in leading magazines in his French homeland. The images here come from his later journeys in 1890 and 1893, which took him to the Pacific North-West, Canada and Alaska.

Tissandier had trained as an architect at L'École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and applied his draftsman skills to faithfully documenting the 'wild west'. His published images were often the first reference point for potential European tourists. He has also achieved some level of lasting fame in conjunction with his brother as pioneers in ballooning history - I found some great material about this searching around today and I'll post something on it in the coming week.

Albert Tissandier - Drawings of Nature and Industry in the U.S. at the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah on behalf of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. The site also includes lengthy excerpts from Tissandier's 1885 journal.