About the Cover Illustration

The figure on the cover of SWT/JFace in Action is a “Femme Patagonne,” a woman from Patagonia, an area of breathtaking natural beauty in the southern regions of Argentina and Chile. From the towering tips of the Andes to the sweeping vistas of the central plains to the pristine beaches on both coasts, Patagonia is a land of stark contrasts. Sparsely populated even today, it has become the ultimate destination for modern-day adventurers.

The illustration is taken from a French travel book, Encyclopedie des Voyages by J. G. St. Saveur, published in 1796. Travel for pleasure was a relatively new phenomenon at the time and travel guides such as this one were popular, introducing both the tourist as well as the armchair traveler to inhabitants of faraway places.

The diversity of the drawings in the Encyclopedie des Voyages speaks vividly of the uniqueness and individuality of the world’s towns and provinces just 200 years ago. This was a time when the dress codes of two regions separated by a few dozen miles identified people uniquely as belonging to one or the other. The travel guide brings to life a sense of isolation and distance of that period and of every other historic period except our own hyperkinetic present.