The directory «Plots of stamps in the catalogue»

Garneray Ambroise Louise
(1783—1857)

Louis Garneray wrote three popular autobiographies recounting his adventurous double career as a sailor, sometimes corsair, and artist. After leaving home at thirteen to sail, he quickly discovered that the captains wanted him to depict their brave deeds, which he did until he was captured by the English in 1806. He spent from 1806 until 1814 in the harbor at Portsmouth imprisoned on various pontons (prisons made from the hulks of disabled French ships moored in the mud), but somehow managed to paint and sell his work for a pittance. When Napoleon abdicated, the British freed their prisoners and Garneray returned to Paris. His maritime experience during the First Empire should have qualified him for a responsible position in the French navy, but that was impossible during the Restoration. In Paris he associated with the opposition coalition in the studio of military artist and fashion illustrator Horace Vernet, where he met artist Théodore Géricault, the Baroness Caroline Lallemand, and songwriter-poet Jean Béranger. Garneray also met the future King Louis Philippe, who helped the artist obtain commissions after 1830. In collaboration with Étienne Jouy, who prepared the text, Louis Garneray painted, then engraved coastal scenes, "Vues des côtes de France," that show his practice of reserving a large portion of his canvases for sky. Unlike the other Garnerays, who painted portraits, Louis did not excel at the human figure, but his handling of details and rendering of dramatic atmospheric effects in landscapes, battles, or fishing scenes are exceptional.

Unable to become a ship captain, Louis Garneray served as the painter of the Duke of Angoulême, the admiral of France, after 1817. In 1819, he prepared two attractive engravings to advertise a book being sold for the subscription (fund-raising) campaign for Champ d'Asile and signed his name backwards, "Yerenrag"-a thin disguise for the top-ranking marine artist in Restoration France. It is unknown whether he confused the geographic information of Texas and Alabama deliberately or unknowingly in the First and Second "View[s] of Aigleville" (a legal Bonapartist agricultural colony in Alabama) and Champ d'Asile (an illegal military colony in territory disputed between the United States and Mexico). In these narrative scenes, endlessly reproduced and imitated, soldiers are working in full-dress wool uniforms in the summer in a Texas landscape featuring palm trees and tobacco plants, with a background of wooded mountains.

Ras al-Khaima, 1972, Return from Elba