Le Bagne De Brest, 18th Century Architectural Drawing, Elevation, Choquet De Lindu, Finistère

The prison of Brest. 18th century French school. Indian ink and gray ink wash. 31.8 x 71.2 cm at sight, in a frame of 40 x 79.5 cm. The scale is given in fathoms. The drawing, strictly speaking (elevation and ground plan), is on a sheet of 17.7 x 66 cm, laminated on the sheet on which appear the black frame and the title ("Plan & Elévation de La Façade du Bagne on the side of the Port. Bt.”). The Brest prison was built from 1749 to 1752 by Antoine Choquet de Lindu (1712‑1790), sailor from Brest, engineer and architect, one of the main builders of the port of Brest (construction slips, barracks, hospitals, stores, factories, dykes, basins, etc.). Antoine Choquet de Lindu wrote the article devoted to prisons in the Encyclopédie of Diderot and D'Alembert. Second prison in France in terms of capacity after that of Toulon, this building of more than 250 meters in length was demolished after the Second World War during the reconstruction of Brest. Very innovative in its time, both from the point of view of safety and hygiene, the prison of Brest is described in the work of its architect Antoine Choquet de Lindu: "Description of the prison, to house on land, the galley slaves or convicts from the Brest arsenal. Projected, built, drawn and engraved. » Brest, R. Malassis, 1759. Work to be combined with: « Description of the three forms of the port of Brest, built, drawn and engraved in 1757 ». Brest, R. Malassis, 1757, in-plano. (Cf. Polak, 1732). Our drawing presents thirteen pillars of reinforcements on the left wing which are not represented on the engraved elevation of this same facade in the work of 1757, nor on that in the volume of plates of the Supplement of the Encyclopedia in 1777. Conversely, our drawing shows no buttress on the right wing, whereas the few photographs that we have been able to see show four (and indeed thirteen on the left). It is likely that these buttresses were added gradually to consolidate the building and that our drawing was made between the construction of the thirteen left buttresses and that of the four right buttresses.