Lot 188: Marie Adrien Persac (French/American, 1823-1873)

signed, gouache

17.8 x 25.4 cm. (7 x 10 in.) unframed.

Persac was born on 14th December 1823 in the town of Saumur on the Loire in central France. His parents were Pierre Edouard Persac, a local landowner and Pauline Sophie Marie (nee Falloux), daughter of a landowner and Mayor of Charcé.

According to family legend Persac left for the United States in 1841 with the intention of hunting buffalo, though the first formal record of his presence in America is the publishing of his banns of marriage in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on 8th December 1851.

Persac was then to produce the work for which he is justifiably famous; views of the Louisiana plantation houses, vignettes of Baton Rouge and New Orleans and engravings of life on the Mississippi. As a recorder of ante-bellum plantation life and post Civil War commercial architecture he has no equal.

Bibliography:
H. P. Bacot..et al, Marie Adrien Persac - Louisana Artist, LA State University Press, 2000.