Item #05172 The New Whole Duty of Man, FORE-EDGE PAINTING, artist The "DOVER PAINTER", Richard ALLESTREE.
The New Whole Duty of Man,
The New Whole Duty of Man,
The New Whole Duty of Man,
The New Whole Duty of Man,
The New Whole Duty of Man,
The New Whole Duty of Man,
The New Whole Duty of Man,
The New Whole Duty of Man,
The New Whole Duty of Man,
The New Whole Duty of Man,

The New Whole Duty of Man,

London: Printed for W. Bent, 1833. Item #05172

With an Exquisite Fore Edge Painting of St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate
By The "Dover Painter"

[FORE-EDGE PAINTING]. [The "DOVER PAINTER"], artist. [ALLESTREE, Richard]. The New Whole Duty of Man, Containing The Faith as well as Practice of A Christian: Made Easy For the Practice of the Present Age… London: Printed for W. Bent, [1833].

With an exquisite fore edge painting beneath the gilt, of St Giles's Cripplegate, Fore Street, London,
by the "Dover Painter". The painting is full of Dickensian style characters.

Octavo (8 1/2 x 5 3/8 inches; 218 x 136 mm.). [ii], [i]-x, [1]-542 pp. Engraved frontispiece of Moses with the Ten Commandments. Neat ink name and date on top blank margin of title-page "Hugh William Williamson/--April 13th 1838".

Bound ca. 1900 in full maroon straight-grain morocco, covers decoratively bordered in gilt and blind, spine with four shallow raised bands, decoratively tooled and lettered in gilt in compartments, decorative gilt board edge and turn-ins, blue marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. With the armorial bookplate of Walter Edwin Frew on front endpaper.

The fore-edge painting, which we believe was executed sometime around 1925, depicts St. Giles's Cripplegate and exhibits an unusual degree of detail, art and craft; the coloring is quite extraordinary.

St Giles-without-Cripplegate is an Anglican church in the City of London, located on Fore Street within the modern Barbican complex. When built it stood without (that is, outside) the city wall, near the Cripplegate. The church is dedicated to St. Giles, patron saint of lepers, beggars and the handicapped. It is one of the few medieval churches left in the City of London, having survived the Great Fire of 1666. John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, was buried in the church in 1674.

The "Dover Painter" an unknown English artist - probably worked on commission exclusively ca. 1920-1930 for Marks & Co, the London booksellers. By 1928 Dawson's Book Shop in Los Angeles, headed by Ernest Dawson, began a relationship with Marks & Co. ["a reciprocal agency agreement"] that included sending crates of books to America via the Panama Canal. Several hundred fore-edges came to Dawson's. Sesslers' in Philadelphia bought and sold examples of the "Dover" painter's work, as fore-edges by this and other artists turned up in the B. George Ulizio collection at Kent State University. Other fore-edge paintings were imported via J.W. Robinson Company [department stores], Los Angeles. The Robinson Co. books came with added new Sangorski & Sutcliffe slipcases made especially for them and sometimes included a typed identifying slip mounted on the end-leaves…

Provenance: Walter Edwin Frew (1864-1941). President Corn Exchange Bank, New York City.

Price: $3,500.00