Travellers in a Cuban forest

The Bordeaux painter Mialhe left France for Cuba in 1838, employed as the landscape painter for the lithographic firm established by François Cosnier and Alexandre Moreau de Jonnès in Havana under the sponsorship of the Royal Patriotic and Economic Society of Cuba. These so-called 'French lithographers', rivals to the Spanish workshop of the Costa brothers, became the foremost lithographers in Cuba. Mialhe's now extremely rare Isla de Cuba pintoresca was published in parts between 1839 and 1842 (37 lithographs were published). For his lithographs of Cuba, see E. Cueto, Mialhe's Colonial Cuba: the prints that shaped the world's view of Cuba, Miami, 1994. Mialhe spent 15 years in Cuba, and was active beyond Havana, travelling into the interior with the naturalist Felipe Poey for subject matter, such as is seen in the present work. Plagued by copyists in Havana, he returned to France in 1854 and exhibited Cuban subjects at the Salons in subsequent years.