The European gaze on American women. 19th century.

An unusual collection of portraits of American women, three of which depict the same subject. This "series" was initiated by Emeric Essex Vidal in his 1820 album titled "Pampas Indians." Here we offer this selection of works by various artists, published in newspapers and books that focused on women in our lands, in Spanish, French, and Italian versions.

Respecting the order of the images; At the top, this lithograph was part of the work Usages et Costumes de tous les Peuples du Monde (Customs and Traditions of All the Peoples of the World) by Auguste Wahlen, pseudonym of the writer Jean-François-Nicolas Loumyer (1801-1875), published by the Librairie Historique-Artistique in Brussels in 1845.

Of the next two, the one on the left has a handwritten inscription on the back, signed in Genoa in 1947: “It belongs to the French edition of N. Dally’s work, Usages et Costum Sociales, Políticos et Religioses de los Pueblos del Mundo (Uses and Customs of the Peoples of the World). So far, I have only seen an Italian edition by Luigi Albedrío, published in Turin in 1846.” The lithograph on the right, also depicting the indigenous Pampas woman whom Vidal portrayed on his journey to the Río de la Plata, in a different artistic composition, was included in the Journal des Voyages.

Regarding the two plates shown in the lower margin, the one on the left—"The Peruvian Woman"—is based on a drawing by Eusebio Planas in Vicente Ortiz de la Puebla's *Universal History of Women, from the Most Remote Antiquity to the Present Day*, published by Juan Pons's Printing and Publishing House in Barcelona in 1880. The one on the right is a creation by E. Duverger: *Men and Women of Bolivia (South America)*.

S.O.52-GEM