Paléontologie. 27 Dessins. 1918-1919.

Palaeontology made beautiful. A highly original and accomplished manuscript on palaeontology featuring 27 watercolours in grisaille and 20 ink drawings made by a talented young artist in Belgium. This is certainly one of the most remarkable manuscripts we have encountered, both for its visual appeal and the rarity of paleontology as the subject of amateur natural history manuscripts. Along with it are 14 other accomplished small pieces, primarily watercolour birthday and holiday cards dating from 1944 to 1964 and addressed to his mother (who turned 85 in 1955 and was alive until at least 1956), his nephew Eric, and his daughter Marguerite, all in Neuchâtel. One is painted on the back of the business card of a Charles Nicolet, the director of a mineral water company in Fribourg.

Though Nicolet seems to have been from Switzerland he was almost certainly spending time in Belgium, as the elaborate frontispiece to this manuscript depicts the Bernissart Iguanodons at the Museum of Natural Sciences in Brussels. The artist has even drawn a figure standing in front of them, busily sketching — perhaps a self portrait? It's likely that many of the other drawings of fossils in the album were originally sketched in the museum, and some of the watercolours of living creatures and prehistoric humans may have been based on paintings displayed there. If not based on works in the museum, they seem to be original compositions by an artist with a sophisticated visual vocabulary who was skilled at framing compositions. The unusual qualities of the linework suggest that Nicolet may have been a commercial illustrator or graphic designer, perhaps for news media, and therefore used to working in styles suited to mechanical reproduction. He was certainly a young man, as the additional illustrated postcards in his hand date from 1964, and it is unclear if he was engaged in military or civilian war work at the time this was made.

The contents of Nicolet's manuscript begin with the 'secondary epoch', 20-30 million years in the past, characterised by 'reptiles gigantesques.' The beautiful watercolour illustrations depict a variety of dinosaurs and other creatures, including sauropods, hadrosaurs, pterosaurs, stegosaurs and marine reptiles in their natural habitats, while the accompanying ink drawings are of paleontologists working in the field and reconstructed skeletons on display. This is followed by the time of mammals and the ice ages, with watercolours of mastodons, megatherium, and deinotherium; a scene of modern humans discovering a frozen mammoth in 1799; and early hominids hunting, defending themselves, and living in a village of stilt houses over a lake. The ink drawings illustrate stone tools, a human skeleton in an uncovered burial, cave art, and the later discovery of a prehistoric wooden boat.

Produced over the course of at least three calendar years (the title gives the dates 1918-1919, but one drawing is dated 1917), the manuscript was carefully planned and precisely laid out with a frontispiece, illustrated title, portrait leaf depicting Baron Cuvier, and a final page of manuscript text describing the four paleontological epochs. Following the prefatory matter each spread is laid out with one or more ink drawings on the left-hand page and one or two tipped-in watercolours on the right, and manuscript explanatory text. Only the final page of watercolours breaks this pattern, being an evocative layout of nine smaller images illustrating the full history of life on Earth, with some of the figures breaking the panes to emerge in an almost three-dimensional fashion. Once laid down, each watercolour was carefully outlined in ink to give the document a sense of formality. It is unclear why this wonderful document was produced — perhaps as a maquette for a planned children's book, or maybe a gift to a young relative? In any case it is an evocative record of early 20th-century paleontological knowledge and museum display.

13-page manuscript (22 x 18 cm); 27 ink & watercolour drawings in grisaille tipped-in, including one on the cover, & 20 ink drawings directly on the leaves; original tan wrappers (19.5 x 23.5 cm) with manuscript titles, stitched with black thread; fine condition.