Horace VERNET (1789-1863). Original graphite drawing, with a - Lot 22

Horace VERNET (1789-1863). Original graphite drawing, with autograph caption signed, Versailles August 7, 1841, followed by a P.A.S. from Abbé Jacques-Paul MIGNE (1800-1875); 1page in-4 (stamp from the coll. of Dr. Max Thorek, Chicago). Album page for the young calculator prodigy Henri Mondeux (1826-1861). At the top of the page, Horace Vernet has drawn the young shepherd seated, having abandoned his sheep and dropped his crook, to trace geometrical figures; and he writes: "The most beautiful gifts of nature are nothing if they do not find their application". Abbé Migne, "founder of the Univers Religieux", adds that Mondeux taught him "in less than a second what I could only know in several hours, the number of letters contained in my courses of Sacred Scripture and Theology in 50 in-4 2-column volumes".