A mid 19th Century French built steam corvette [or "Unarmoured Cruiser"] 'Alexandre' with masts, spars, standing and running rigging and deck details including anchors, catheads, deck rails, companionways, belaying rails and pins, gratings, ventilator, glazed deckhouse with open bridge with double helm, funnel and wing bridges, aft deck light, four Armstrong guns with steps and elevation jacks mounted one at bow and stern and one each side in sponsons and four others mounted in carriages, all with traverse rings, and six ship's boats in davits and other details. The hull, carved from the solid has four blade propellor, rudder and carved gilded cherub, flower and leaf decoration to bow and stern, finished in red, black, white and lacquer (some restoration) -- 29 x 46½in. (73.7 x 118cm.). Stand and display base (later)

Details

A mid 19th Century French built steam corvette [or "Unarmoured Cruiser"] 'Alexandre' with masts, spars, standing and running rigging and deck details including anchors, catheads, deck rails, companionways, belaying rails and pins, gratings, ventilator, glazed deckhouse with open bridge with double helm, funnel and wing bridges, aft deck light, four Armstrong guns with steps and elevation jacks mounted one at bow and stern and one each side in sponsons and four others mounted in carriages, all with traverse rings, and six ship's boats in davits and other details. The hull, carved from the solid has four blade propellor, rudder and carved gilded cherub, flower and leaf decoration to bow and stern, finished in red, black, white and lacquer (some restoration) -- 29 x 46½in. (73.7 x 118cm.). Stand and display base (later)
See illustration

Lot Essay

Despite extensive research, no Alexandre has been traced in the French Navy in the mid-late nineteenth century except the screw-powered two-decker of 1857 of which this is clearly not the model. The distinctive black-topped white funnel is very suggestive of the Imperial Russian Navy however, and a few ships of their fleet were being built in French yards during that period. Even though no Russian vessel named Alexandre is recorded, it is significant that the reigning Tsar after 1881 was Alexander III after whom a new ship might have been named or at least planned before altered circumstances halted the project.

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