Lot 5: Carlo Pellegrini 'Ape' (Italian, 1839-1889)

M. Paul Lessar, 'The Afghan Frontier'
Civil Engineer and Russian Diplomat
signed 'Ape' (lower right)
pencil, watercolour and bodycolour
12 x 7 1/8 in. (30.5 x 18.2 cm.)

Thomas Gibson Bowles.
Original Drawings for Vanity Fair; Christie's, London, 5 - 8 March 1912, part of lot 454 (4 gns. to Maggs).
with The Parker Gallery, London.
Stanley Jackson.

D I P L O M A T S

M. Paul Lessar (1851-1905), Civil Engineer and Russian Diplomat, was educated at the École des Ingenieurs in St. Petersburg. He began his career accompanying expeditions into Asia surveying railways. From 1881, Lessar made exploratory journeys across the Afghan Frontier and was, perhaps, an inspiration for Kipling's novel Kim. With his expert knowledge of the Russo-Persian and Russo-Afghan frontier, he was sent by the Russian Government to London, in 1885, as and Expert Envoy to London and 'Attaché to the Governor of the Transcaspian'.

So extended and constant were his journeys, that in the course of two years he rode a distance of nearly six thousand miles; and there is probably no living man who knows so well the whole ground of the [frontier], or who is so well able to put his finger upon the points thereof that are politically doubtful or militarily important.... he speaks English a little and French very well. He is a dangerous antagonist.

Vanity Fair, 'Men of the Day', No. 341, 1885.

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