In 1837, the Royal Patriotic and Economic Society
sent Alexander Moreau de Jonnes to France to contract skilled artists and
purchase a high quality lithographic press. Among the artists who
returned with Moreau was the talented but little known landscape painter Pierre
Toussaint Frederic Mialhe. Together with his French colleagues, Mialhe
conceived the production of a large series of views depicting Cuban landscapes
and views. Between 1840 and 1845, he issued a collection of views
entitled Isla de Cuba Pintoresca, followed by a second
collection, the Viaje Pintoresco Al Rededor de la Isla de Cuba from
1847-48 published by Louis Marquier.

The series success was immediate. The prints were
purchased by private individuals and American and European publishers who were
keen to illustrate their stories with the views. However in 1853 Bernado May, a
Spaniard working in Cuba, sent 26 of the Mialhe views to be copied in Germany.
The German lithographs were then sent back to Cuba where they were sold in
competition with Mialhe's originals and at half the price.

Mialhe and Marquier sued May for copyright
violation but due to a legal technicality lost their case and May was allowed
to continue selling his views; promptly producing a far grander
chromolithographed second version of Mialhe's collection in 1855. Cheated and
disillusioned, Mialhe left Cuba for France shortly thereafter never to return.
The first important lithographed work of the island, it is largely through the decorative
pirate editions that Mialhe so fiercely disputed that his work is accessible
today.