Colour Plate & Illustrated
[MONNIER, Henry, illustrator].
Recontres Parisiennes. Macedoine Pittoresque. Croquée d'apr'es nature, au sien des plaisirs, des modes, de l'activité, des occupations, du desoeuvrement, des travers, des vices, des mis'eres, du luxe, des prodigalités, des habitans de la Capitale dans tours les rangs et dans toutes les classes de la societé. Par Henry Monnier.
Paris: Chez Gihaut Fr'eres, [n.d., ca. 1826]. Oblong, small 4to., (8 1/8 x 10 9/16 inches; 206 x 270mm), forty plates containing forty-four hand-coloured lithographs by Senefelder, original green diaper-grain paper boards, rebacked and recornered with dark green hard-grain morocco, upper cover lettered in gilt, original front lithographed wrapper bound in (cut and mounted), occasional light foxing, five plates (first, seventeenth, twenty-first, thirty-first, and thirty-eighth) with neatly repaired tears, just affecting image, several additional plates with marginal repairs, overall a very good copy of this extremely rare album.
Between 1825 and 1827 Monnier passed much of his time in London, where he collaborated with Lami is what was to become the Voyage en Angleterre. On his return to Paris he embarked on a series of albums in which he records the manners and humours of the city with unprecedented profusion. Between 1826 and 1830 he satisfied the insatiable demand for his designs with almost 500 lithographs, nearly all of which were drawn with a pen and coloured by hand. For each design he himself coloured a master print and carefully supervised its subsequent preparation ... Some of the salient titles in his human comedy may be mentioned. There are potpourris like Recréations du coeur et de l'esprit, Paris vivant, and Rencontres Parisiennes. Macédoine pittoreque. There are more closely focussed surveys like Les grisettes, Moeurs administratives, Galerie théâtrale, Boutiques de Paris, and Siz Quartiers de Paris (Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, p. 199). Hiler, p. 627 and Lipperheide 3665 (both calling for twenty-six plates, nine of which are hand-coloured).
Price: £ 880
US Dollar Price: $ 1750
Stock Number: 74442