Cent et Un Robert-Macaire, Les
Paris: Chez Aubert et Cie, , 1839. Item #04944
Daumier's Greatest Comic Masterpiece
The Exceptionally Rare Original Hand-Colored Quarto Edition
One Hundred and One Magnificent Hand-Colored Lithographs
[DAUMIER, Honoré]. PHILIPON, Charles. Les Cent et Un Robert-Macaire composés et dessinés par M. H. Daumier... Paris: Aubert et Cie, 1839.
First quarto edition. Original hand-colored issue.
Two quarto volumes (10 3/8 x 8 inches; 264 x 203 mm.). With 101 magnificent hand-colored lithographed plates, all heightened with gum arabic.
Contemporary red chagrin over silk paper-covered boards, elaborately blocked in gilt, all edges gilt.
A few text leaves toned, occasional scattered foxing largely confined to margins, but an unusually attractive copy. The original contemporary hand-coloring remains exceptionally bright and fresh throughout.
Few creations in the history of nineteenth-century illustration proved more influential than Robert Macaire. Originally a theatrical rogue invented by Frédérick Lemaître for the melodrama L'Auberge des Adrets, the character was transformed by Charles Philipon and Honoré Daumier into the very personification of modern society's corruption, speculation, opportunism, and commercial fraud.
Unable to attack King Louis-Philippe directly after the tightening of censorship, Philipon and Daumier turned their attention from politics to society itself. Robert Macaire became the perfect vehicle through which they could ridicule bankers, lawyers, stockbrokers, politicians, journalists, industrialists, doctors, inventors, philanthropists, publishers, and virtually every profession created by the rapidly expanding bourgeois economy. No enterprise was too respectable to escape his schemes, no victim too sophisticated to become his dupe.
The result was one of the supreme achievements of French social satire. First issued individually in Le Charivari and later collected in the celebrated Caricaturana, the series enjoyed immense contemporary popularity. So great was the demand that Aubert published this reduced quarto edition in 1839 in an edition of approximately six hundred sets.
While the lithographs are reductions of Daumier's original folio compositions, they preserve the extraordinary vitality of his draftsmanship and remain among the most entertaining illustrated books of the nineteenth century. As Gordon N. Ray observed: "Les Robert-Macaire remains Daumier's best-known series." He further noted that although these reduced lithographs are generally less accomplished than the original folio issues, they are "not often found colored."
That observation greatly understates the rarity of copies retaining their original contemporary hand-coloring. The present example is distinguished not only by its completeness but by the remarkable freshness of its coloring, whose delicate palette and gum arabic highlights considerably enhance the visual brilliance of every plate.
More than simply comic entertainment, Les Cent et Un Robert-Macaire constitutes one of the great illustrated chronicles of the July Monarchy. Daumier and Philipon expose an age intoxicated by speculation, finance, political ambition and commercial enterprise, yet their satire remains astonishingly modern. Robert Macaire is not merely a nineteenth-century swindler; he is the eternal confidence man, continually reinventing himself to exploit every new opportunity offered by society.
Few illustrated books better demonstrate Daumier's extraordinary gifts as both artist and storyteller. Across one hundred and one brilliantly conceived scenes, Robert Macaire appears in every imaginable disguise - stock promoter, publisher, lawyer, inventor, politician, philanthropist, physician, military entrepreneur, newspaper editor, art dealer, and countless others - each episode exposing another facet of bourgeois hypocrisy with inexhaustible invention and comic brilliance.
Beautiful original hand-colored examples of this celebrated work are among the most desirable of all nineteenth-century French illustrated books and are encountered only rarely on the market.
Price: $11,500.00