Antique watercolour (dated 1840) was executed  by famous French landscape painter and watercolorist Édouard Auguste Nousveaux (1811 - Paris - 1867). it depicts Paris view: The island of the city seen from the Quai de l’Institut. We found by the same artist another watercolour with the same view seen from the island see our last image). 

Édouard Auguste Nousveaux (4 September 1811, Paris  - 1867, Paris) was a French landscape painter and watecolorist. He is best known for the works he created after participating in an expedition to Senegal and Sierra Leone ; many of which were used in books and travel magazines.

He obtained his artistic education at the  École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. In 1831, barely aged twenty. he held his first showing at the Salon. Nousveaux, then aged thirty-one, was chosen to replace him; having already displayed an affinity for exotic themes. Upon his return in 1845, he exhibited nine watercolors at the Salon. They received mixed reviews. He was named a Knight in the Legion of Honor in 1847. He would continue to make use of the sketches he executed in Senegal for several more years. In 1850, he turned to making lithographs of Paris, which were poorly received and criticized for being inaccurate or anachronistic. After this, there are few traces of any significant artistic production, although he did some collaborative work with Le Magasin Peinture and L'Illustration. He continued to travel, and died after returning from a military expedition.

In 1890, Colonel Henri-Nicolas Frey used some of Nousveaux' watercolors to illustrate his book, West Coast of Africa: views, scenes, sketches. Many publishers used his works without crediting them.

Literature: Thieme/Becker  XXV, 1931, 527 , Benezit, on-line Wikipedia.

Inscription: signed and dated 1840lower left.

Technique:  watercolour, gouache on paper, with passpartout and in original period gilt frame. 

Measurements: image w 8 7/8" x h 5 3/4" (22,5 x 14,5 cm),, framed w 17 3/4" x h 15" (45 x 36 cm)

Condition: in very good  condition.