Lot n° 2404  | Auction 408

Estimate € 1,800 - 2,500

Auction: 21 November 2017 at 15:00

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SAUVAN, Jean Baptiste Balthazar (b.1780) - Picturesque Tour of the Seine from Paris to the Sea. London: L. Harrison for R. Ackermann, 1821 [filigrane 1818-1820]. First edition. A fine and fresh copy of one of the greatest nineteenth-century English color plate books illustrating the scenery along the Seine. Brilliant impressions of the plates, superbly hand-colored. "The River Seine is well known to form a distinguished feature in the Tour of France, as it winds through and adorns the important province of Normandy, and is the great commercial Channel of the Metropolis of that Kingdom. This River reflects, in its earlier stream, the most striking views of metropolitan grandeur; and, as it proceeds, Nature has been most lavish in beautiful pictures on its banks, and presents, in its course, a succession of objects, whose landscape enrichments are connected with antiquarian circumstances peculiarly interesting to the English Traveller" (prospectus). The work was issued by Ackermann in six parts, each containing four plates, between January and June 1821. In the history of book production “there is no more attractive figure than that of Rudolph Ackermann, through whose extraordinary enterprise and spirit of adventure, aquatint was successfully applied to the illustration of books” (Prideaux, 120-23). One of Ackermann’s most lucrative projects was his remarkable Picturesque Tours, a series of seven books produced between 1820-28, among which is the present work. The plates were pulled and hand-colored in the Ackermann studio, whose reputation for producing splendid illustrated publications and disseminating fine aquatint prints spanned over two centuries. 4to (354 x 285mm). With engraved color vignette on title, unsigned aquatint vignette at foot of last page, engraved color map, and 24 fine hancoloured aquatint plates by Augustus Pugin and John Gendall (minor rubbing at margins of few leaves, few scattered spots). Contemporary red straight grained morocco (rebacked preserving old spine, corners restored) Abbey, Travel 90; Tooley 445; Bobins, Exotic and the Beautiful II: 548. The lot is accompanied by an import certificate.


Estimate € 1,800 - 2,500

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