LAPLANTE, Edouardo (lithographer).

A large and decorative view of the city of Havana from the sea, showing ships at harbour in the foreground, the dock and city beyond. The lighthouse is on the left side of the image.

Edouardo Laplante was born in France in 1818, and he came to Cuba in 1848. The packaging and advertising needs of Cuba's flourishing tobacco industry created a mid-19th-century boom in printmaking. Within a short time Laplante established himself as the best artist lithographer in Cuba, travelling throughout the island, making a valuable documentary record of the people and customs. In collaboration with Leonardo Baranano (1837-1858), he drew and printed the series of views titled Isla de Cuba Pintoresca. He died in 1860.

Apart from these fine large-scale views, Laplante is most famous for his collection of twenty-eight lithographs, Los Ingenios de Cuba (1857), which provides detailed views of both the external appearances and internal social conditions in major sugar plants.