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Alexis Soltykoff, Voyages dans l'Inde, Paris: Garnier Frères, third edition, not dated

2 volumes in a large single octavo volume
456 pages, including the title page, half-titles, an additional title printed in gold with a wood-engraved vignette, a single-page map, and 36 later hand-coloured tinted lithograph plates with tissue guards; original luxuriously gilt-decorated black cloth, incorporating pink, red, green and blue morocco onlays, with the front board decorated with a picture of a Maharaja, while the backboard is showing a lute player along with extravagant blind stamping as well; all edges gilt; the spine is in gold damask.
11 x 7.5 x 1 in (28 x 19.5 x 3 cm)

LIST OF PLATES
1. Map of Carte de l'Inde / 2. Route entre Colombo et Kandy (Ceylan) / 3. Ballet dramatique, représenté ar des Nalabars dans un bois, à Ceylan, près Colombo / 4. Ofirande d'un chef kandien à un temple de Bouddla, etc / 5. Prètres de Bouddha, Cingalis, etc / 6. Fète de la lune, à Ceylan / 7. Ceylan, entre Colombo et Kandy / 8. Village de Gatiganawa / 9. Procession religieuse dans les galeries du couvent de Ramisseram / 10. Procession religieuse à Madras / 11. Condjereram, ville sainte dans le Karnatik / 12. Intérieur du couvent de Condjeveram / 13. Une pagode à Madura / 14. Eléphants du radja de Travand / 15. Procession de la déesse Kali / 16. Les bords du Gange, près de Calcutta / 17. Environs de Calcutta / 18. Village bengali des bords du Gange / 19. Principale rue de Lucknow / 20. Voyage en poste dans les plaines du Pandjab / 21. Une rue de Lahore / 22. Schir-Sing, roi du Pandjab, ct sa suite, allant à la chasse aux environs de Lahore / 23. Schir-Sing revenant d'une revue de troupes / 24. Habitation européenne, à Simla / 25. Forèt de Mahassou, près de Simla / 26. Danse cachemirienne, près de Simla / 27. Temple rustique, aux environs de Simla / 28. Vallée du Kanaour, dans l'Himalaya / 29. Déota, ou temple paien (vallée du Kanaour) / 30. Aux environs de Tchini-Gong / 31. Cortége du Grand Mogol, à Dehli / 32. Bords de l'Indus, à Sacar-Bacar / 33. Chasse aux éléphants, dans la forèt de Karnigàl / 34. La cour du roi de Gwalior / 35. Achat d'armes à Dehli / 36. Arbre banian, sur la lisière du Paria-Djungle / 37. Idem dans le Paria-Djungle

A MAHARAJA IN GILT: SOLTYKOFF’S VOYAGES DANS L’INDE IN PUBLISHER’S LUXURIOUS ONLAID BINDING

Remarkable travel book on rural India in a deluxe oriental-style binding with text in French.

Prince Aleksei Dmitrievich Soltykoff (or: Aleksandr Mikhailovich Saltuikov / Aleksei Dmitrievich Saltykov) was born in 1806 in St. Petersburg as a member of an influential and wealthy family. He was also a traveler and artist who explored India and Persia. He was the grandson of Prince Nikolay Saltykov.

Prince Alexis Soltykoff’s Voyages dans l’Inde, occupies a distinctive and elevated position within the visual and literary canon of nineteenth-century European travel accounts of India. Published in Paris by Garnier Frères in an undated but bibliographically attested third edition (circa 1851–58), the volume captures the cultural and physical landscapes of India through the lens of a Russian aristocrat who travelled extensively across the subcontinent during two separate journeys from 1841 to 1846.

Comprising 456 pages of text accompanied by 36 finely executed tinted lithographic plates and a folding map, this work is at once a personal travel narrative, a visual ethnography, and an objet de luxe. The lithographs—after Soltykoff’s own drawings and realised by accomplished French lithographers including Robineau, Lehnert, and Cupper—depict an extraordinarily diverse range of subjects : temple architecture, courtly scenes, itinerant musicians, merchants, Brahmin rituals, and picturesque views from Madras to Lahore. The detailed execution and painterly finesse of these plates rival and, in several cases, exceed the artistic ambition found in earlier British works.

In terms of comparative context, Soltykoff’s Voyages dans l’Inde stands alongside William Hodges’ Select Views in India (1786–88) as a landmark in the visual recording of the subcontinent by European artists. While Hodges’ aquatints were grounded in the sublime aesthetic of late eighteenth-century Romanticism and executed with the backing of the East India Company, Soltykoff’s lithographs are more intimate, less overtly political, and suffused with the traveller’s personal enchantment. Unlike Hodges, Soltykoff was not a servant of Empire but a privileged outsider—his Russian diplomatic background providing a critical detachment that lent his observations a freshness rarely encountered in British colonial reportage.

Similarly, Soltykoff’s work may be seen as a continental parallel to Emily Eden’s Portraits of the Princes and People of India (1844). Where Eden’s refined lithographic portraits were shaped by her elite British social milieu and tended towards static elegance, Soltykoff’s plates are dynamic and atmospheric, reflecting a more immersive and inquisitive sensibility. His depictions of Indian figures are less about typology and more about lived experience—a nuanced difference that renders his images remarkably modern for their time.

In tone and composition, the volume also invites comparison with George Francklin Atkinson’s Curry and Rice on Forty Plates (1859), though Soltykoff’s work predates it by nearly a decade. While Atkinson’s satirical illustrations capture British life in India through caricature, Soltykoff’s renderings offer an unguarded view into Indian life as observed by a curious foreigner rather than a resident colonial. His plates possess neither the irony of Atkinson nor the formality of Eden, but occupy an expressive middle ground between observation and empathy.

The third edition, particularly when encountered in its lavish publisher’s binding with gilt and polychrome ornamentation, is a testament to Garnier Frères’ mid-century ambition to produce books of both scholarly and decorative value. The inclusion of a delicately engraved folding map enhances the volume’s functionality, enabling the reader to trace the author’s extensive itinerary across India’s diverse geographies.

Today, Voyages dans l’Inde is recognised as one of the most refined non-British visual accounts of India prior to the 1857 Rebellion. It offers scholars of colonial visual culture a unique alternative perspective—neither imperial nor subaltern, but richly cosmopolitan—and remains essential for any serious collection focused on the illustrated travel literature of the East.

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