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Journey to Spain, by Charles Garnier

With Collaboration of Louise Garnier, Gustave Boulanger and Ambroise Baudry
2012
Donostia-San Sebastián, Nerea, 2012, 2 volumes.
ISBN
9788415042242
90.00

The architect of the Paris Opera and the Monte Carlo Casino, Jean-Louis Charles Garnier (1825-1898), launched in May 1868 a trip to Spain 25 days duration in which he toured the country from north to south. He was accompanied by his wife, Louise Bary, and two friends, the architect Ambroise Baudry and the painter Gustave Clarence Boulanger. Garnier and Boulanger left a valuable journal of the Spanish experience, entitled Itinéraire d'un voyage en Espagne, where along with practical travel details (budgets, expenses, accommodation and transport), scoring short - and often insightful comments in prose and verse jocular tone - on cities and monuments, some appreciated and other criticized mercilessly.

However, the most precious material for the Voyage en Espagne consists of the pen drawings of the architect and the painter, landscapes, genre scenes and caricatures of the trio; and, above all, urban views and designs of buildings, recording his likes and historiographical phobias, and glimpses on the effect that Spanish architecture could have on Garnier's style. There are nearly 300 images, 250 of them made ​​in Spanish territory, and about thirty relevant to the trip by French lands.

This issue brings to light for the first time this extraordinary unpublished notebook of Charles Garnier. A neat edition in two volumes with case, including facsimile reproduction rate Travelogue, plus a Spanish translation and three preliminary studies on the architect and his time. This beautiful publication invites the general public to contemplate, one century and a half later, the image of Spain in an exciting new light.