1859 Gignoux's Niagara (Belmont Collection), Zouaves at Palestro, Dickens — Jul 9

🗞️ HARPER'S WEEKLY · July 9, 1859
Complete Issue · New York

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

A collector's issue of genuine art historical significance — a full-page reproduction of Régis François Gignoux's Niagara Falls painting from the collection of the great financier and art patron August Belmont, alongside the Zouaves charging at the Battle of Palestro, a nearly double-page Risorgimento war map, and a continuing Dickens serialization. A primary document of Hudson River School art patronage and the Italian War in one complete newspaper.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🎨 GIGNOUX'S NIAGARA — FROM AUGUST BELMONT'S COLLECTION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🌊 FULL PAGE — "GIGNOUX'S NIAGARA — THE PROPERTY OF HON. AUGUST BELMONT"
A full-page engraved reproduction of a Niagara Falls painting by Régis François Gignoux — from the private collection of August Belmont, the American agent of the Rothschild banking dynasty, one of the great art patrons and collectors of the Gilded Age, and the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Gignoux (1816-1882) was a French-born Hudson River School painter who trained under Paul Delaroche at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris before moving to New York in 1840, where he worked alongside Frederic Church, Albert Bierstadt, and John Frederick Kensett at the famous Tenth Street Studio Building. He became the only well-known Hudson River School painter to specialize in winter landscapes, and his Niagara series — of which the U.S. Senate holds his "Niagara, The Table Rock — Winter" in its permanent collection — are among the most celebrated American landscape paintings of the mid-19th century. His Niagara Falls in Winter (1858) was exhibited in 1859 alongside Frederic Church's monumental Niagara, making this Harper's Weekly reproduction a primary document of Gignoux's work at the peak of his fame. Gignoux's paintings are in the collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the New York Historical Society, and the Georgia Museum of Art. This Harper's Weekly engraving documenting the Belmont-owned Niagara is a primary document of both Gignoux's art and Belmont's celebrated collection. An original print — not a reproduction — of a museum-level work, documented in one of the most important private art collections of the Gilded Age.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
⚔️ THE ZOUAVES AT PALESTRO
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

💥 NEARLY FULL PAGE — "THE CHARGE OF THE ZOUAVES AT THE BATTLE OF PALESTRO"
A dramatic illustration of the French Zouaves charging at the Battle of Palestro (May 30-31, 1859) — one of the decisive engagements of the Second Italian War of Independence, in which French Zouaves and Piedmontese Bersaglieri drove the Austrians from the fortified village of Palestro in fierce fighting. The Zouaves' courage at Palestro was so remarkable that King Victor Emanuel II of Sardinia made himself an honorary corporal in the Zouave regiment. A vivid and significant piece of Risorgimento military history.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🗺️ THE RISORGIMENTO WAR MAP
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🗺️ NEARLY DOUBLE-PAGE MAP — "SARDINIA, PIEDMONT, SAVOY, PARMA, AND MODENA"
A nearly double-page map of the territories at the heart of the Italian Risorgimento — Sardinia-Piedmont, Savoy, Parma, and Modena — the states whose fates were being decided on the battlefields of Lombardy. A significant piece of Italian cartographic and political history at the defining moment of national unification.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🖼️ INSIDE THE ISSUE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🎆 FRONT PAGE — "FIRE IN THE FOURTH"
A front-page illustration of Fourth of July fireworks celebrations — a vivid piece of Antebellum American patriotic holiday culture.

✍️ CONTINUING SERIALIZATION — "A TALE OF TWO CITIES" BY CHARLES DICKENS
A continuing installment of A Tale of Two Cities — the novel whose themes of revolution and sacrifice resonate alongside the Italian War content in this issue.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📋 CONDITION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

I photograph every page of every issue so you can inspect the condition closely before purchasing. Please review all images carefully and don't hesitate to ask any questions — I'm happy to provide additional detail or close-up shots of any page, illustration, or area of concern before you buy.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📌 DETAILS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Publication ········ Harper's Weekly
Date ··············· July 9, 1859
City ··············· New York
Format ············· Illustrated newspaper, complete in 16 pages

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📦 SHIPPING & PRESERVATION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

• Stored in an acid-free protective bag and flat-shipped in a padded envelope with heavy cardboard reinforcement
• Fully tracked for your peace of mind

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔍 SEO TAGS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Gignoux Niagara antique, Regis Gignoux Niagara, Gignoux Hudson River School, August Belmont art collection, Belmont collection antique, Gignoux Museum Fine Arts, Gignoux Brooklyn Museum, Gignoux Senate collection, Hudson River School antique, Niagara painting antique, Gignoux winter landscape, Frederic Church Gignoux, Tenth Street Studio antique, Zouaves Battle Palestro, Palestro Zouaves antique, Second Italian War antique, Risorgimento battle antique, Piedmont Savoy Parma map, Risorgimento war map antique, Victor Emanuel Zouave antique, Dickens Tale Two Cities, Fourth July fireworks antique, Harper's Weekly 1859, antique newspaper 1859, antebellum newspaper, Victorian illustrated newspaper, antique illustration engraving, framing quality print, Hudson River School collector, Gignoux collector, Italian history collector, history lover gift, rare newspaper collectible, museum quality ephemera