Album Chinois
- Victor Lecou: Paris, 1845
Victor Lecou: Paris, 1845. Very Good. Paris: Victor Lecou, n.d. [ca. 1845]. Presumed First Edition. Folio (34.5cm); publisher's brown cloth, upper cover elaborately stamped in gilt within blind rules, small gilt vignette to rear cover, all edges gilt, yellow endpapers; twenty (20) leaves of hand-colored lithographed plates facing explanatory text printed on versos only. Light wear to cloth extremities, endpapers darkened along margins, scattered to heavy foxing throughout, a few plates additionally browned, else a Very Good, bright and sound copy. Though a few of the illustrations are dated in the image in the 1820s, this publication presumably from the 1840s based on publisher Victor Lecou, whose output was concentrated in the 1840s and 50s.
Marvelous plate book depicting twenty scenes of Chinese life and labor based on works by popular French artists of the day—Hyacinthe Aubry-Lecomte, Henri Grevedon, Achile Devéria, Auguste Jacques Regnier, and others. Much of the volume is devoted to different trades: hat maker, Buddhist monk, shoemaker, brick layer, arrow maker, furrier, traveling forger, lantern seller, fish and flute merchant, or a distiller preparing zam-fou, described here as a kind of rice-based eau de vie, but stronger. A small cache of plates also show more quotidian scenes: an upper class mother and her child in an elegant nursery, a family of river-dwellers, a group of children eating lunch.
The lithographs were prepared by the Parisian artist, printer, and bookshop owner Mlle. Josephine-Clemence Formentin (1802–1863), who opened her first business on the rue Saint-André-des-Arts when she was just twenty-two years old. According to the Dictionnaire de femmes librares en France (1470–1870), she specialized primarily in producing and selling fine art prints as well as a few technical art guides. Though she had a prolific output, plate books in which she provided all the artwork are rare.
We find no OCLC listings that conform with this volume. We do find a similar item (OCLC no. 874365643) illustrated with albumen prints which sounds cool but is not what we have here.
Marvelous plate book depicting twenty scenes of Chinese life and labor based on works by popular French artists of the day—Hyacinthe Aubry-Lecomte, Henri Grevedon, Achile Devéria, Auguste Jacques Regnier, and others. Much of the volume is devoted to different trades: hat maker, Buddhist monk, shoemaker, brick layer, arrow maker, furrier, traveling forger, lantern seller, fish and flute merchant, or a distiller preparing zam-fou, described here as a kind of rice-based eau de vie, but stronger. A small cache of plates also show more quotidian scenes: an upper class mother and her child in an elegant nursery, a family of river-dwellers, a group of children eating lunch.
The lithographs were prepared by the Parisian artist, printer, and bookshop owner Mlle. Josephine-Clemence Formentin (1802–1863), who opened her first business on the rue Saint-André-des-Arts when she was just twenty-two years old. According to the Dictionnaire de femmes librares en France (1470–1870), she specialized primarily in producing and selling fine art prints as well as a few technical art guides. Though she had a prolific output, plate books in which she provided all the artwork are rare.
We find no OCLC listings that conform with this volume. We do find a similar item (OCLC no. 874365643) illustrated with albumen prints which sounds cool but is not what we have here.