MONNIER, Henri

Modes et Ridicules & Exploitation generale des modes et ridicules de Paris et Londres.

Paris: Chez Gihaut Frères, 1825. Item #04920

Two of Henry Monnier’s Exceptionally Rare Earliest Suites of Caricatures

[MONNIER, Henry, illustrator]. [Modes et Ridicules]. Paris: Chez Gihaut Frères, Editeurs, [1825].

Large quarto (13 5/16 x 10 inches; 339 x 255 mm.). Ten fine hand colored lithograph plates, complete. Plates lithographed by Villain.

Henry Monnier’s exceptionally rare second album of caricatures.

According to OCLC there are only two copies in libraries and institutions worldwide: The Morgan Library & Museum (NY, USA) and Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek Klassik (Germany).

[bound together with]

[MONNIER, Henry, illustrator]. Exploitation generale des modes et ridicules de Paris et Londres. Paris: Chez Gihaut Frères, Editeurs, [1825].

Henry Monnier’s exceptionally rare first album of caricatures.

Large quarto (13 5/16 x 10 inches; 339 x 255 mm.). Five (of six) hand-colored lithographed plates. Plates lithographed by Senefelder. Missing the first plate “L’Espoir de sa Famille”

Bound together in the original publisher's quarter red roan over light brown pictorial lithograph boards. Overall, an excellent copy of these extremely scarce suites. Housed in a felt-lined, half red morocco clamshell case, spine with five raised bands, ruled and lettered in gilt in compartments.

According to OCLC there are only two copies in libraries and institutions worldwide: The Morgan Library & Museum (NY, USA) and Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek Klassik (Germany).

The plates are captioned:

1. Avec beaucoup de plaisir, Monsieur! (With much pleasure, Sir!)
2. Voulez-vous me faire l'honneur, Mademoiselle?… (Will you do me the honor, Miss?)
3. Satisfaction personnelle. (Personal satisfaction)
4. Embarras de Soi-meme. (Self embarrassment)
5. Mes jours de danse sont passés!… (My dancing days are over!…)
6. Mécontentement intérieur. (Domestic discontent)
7. Le Journal ne dit rien!… (The journal does not say anything!…)
8. Distraction.
9. Je ne trouve plus de danseur! (I cannot find a dance partner anymore!)
10. Un Chanteur de Romances. (A singer of Romances.)

Marie 76-85.

[2]. Ayez pitié des Chiens.
[3]. Pauvre Cousin regarde ton habit.
[4]. Les Extravagances. (a little foxed)
[5]. Les Antipodes.
[6]. Une grande Dame. (a little browned and chipped at edges)

(Missing the first plate “L’Espoir de sa Famille”)

“Monnier [1799-1877] grew up in the Parisian bourgeois world, where his father was an employee like those he was later to depict with such mastery in his lithographs…After he finished his education, he served as a notary of Justice, where he seems to have been valued chiefly for his handwriting…He then studied in the ateliers of Girodet and later Gros, where he learned lithography and became the friend of Bonington and Lami. His first lithographs, of which the album Modes et ridicules of 1825 is representative, are grotesque exaggerations in the manner of Rowlandson that call to mind J.-B. Isabey’s Caricatures de J.J. [see Ray 101] and Lami’s Les contretemps [see Ray 137]. Between 1825 and 1827 Monnier passed much of his time in London, where he collaborated with Lami in what was to become the Voyage en Angleterre. On his return to Paris he embarked on a series of albums in which he recorded the manners and humors 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 colored by hand” (Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, p. 199).

Marie 60-64; Not in Melcher.

Price: $9,500.00