**Originally Listed At $250**

Three albumen prints. (1) C. Zangaki (Greek, active 1860s to 1880s). "Colonade du grand temple de Louqsor" (Colonade of the Grand Temple of Luxor) ca. 1880. Signed in lower left, title in lower right. (2) Attributed to Pascal Sebah (Ottoman/Assyrian/Armenian, 1823-1886) or C. and G. Zangaki (Greek, active 1860s to 1880s). "La statue de bois" (Wooden Statue) ca. 1860 to 1890. Title inscribed in lower left and right. (3) Emile Bechard (French, 1844-1905) and Hippolyte Delie (French, 1841-1899). Statue of Chephren, Plate 26 from "Album du Musee de Boulaq" by Auguste Edouard Mariette Bey (French, 1821-1881) in 1872. An intriguing trio of photographs displaying monuments and sculptures from ancient Egypt as they appeared in the mid to late 19th century. Size of largest print (Temple of Luxor): 10.25" L x 8.25" W (26 cm x 21 cm); of largest matte (Luxor): 15" L x 13" W (38.1 cm x 33 cm)

According to art historian John Hannavy, the Zangaki brothers (whose first names were probably George and Constantine according to scholars) "produced some of the finest images" of late 19th century Egypt. Historians and collectors continue to covet their photos of life during the late Ottoman Empire. A label on the verso of "Colonade of the Grand Temple of Luxor" states: "Two brothers from Greece, C. and G. Zangaki, were responsible for a prolific amount of photographs in Egypt well into the 1890's. According to Nissan N. Perez, in 'Focus East' (1988), it is probable that one was the photographer and the other a technician since the style was so consistent."

"Auguste Edouard Mariette Bey commissioned Delie and Bechard to photograph the antiquity collection of the Musee de Boulaq soon after their arrival from France. With a text edited by Mariette, the edition of 40 photographs was published by Moures and Cie in a luxurious format and it received immediate acclaim. The collection was later incorporated into the Cairo Museum. Delie and Bechard remained partners until the mid 1870's."

"La statue de bois" has been collected by University of California Berkeley and the Fouad Debbas Collection in Beirut. Though Berkeley attributes the photograph to Pascal Sebah, Yasmine Chemali of the Fouad Debbas Collection and Anne-Helene Perrot, a research grantee at Ecole du Louvre, suggested it was by the Zangaki brothers in "The gaze of commercial photographers. Some shots from the Egyptian collection of the Fouad Debbas Collection under study" ("The Notebooks of the Ecole du Louvre" [Online], 2014).

Provenance: ex-Royal Athena Galleries, New York City, New York, USA

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#175637

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