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Poetical Works of William Collins, The
London: William Pickering, 1830. Item #05176
A Fine Fore-Edge Painting by "The Dover Painter"
FORE-EDGE PAINTING. [The "DOVER PAINTER"], artist. HAYDAY, binder. COLLINS, William.
The Poetical Works of William Collins. London: William Pickering, 1830.
With a fine fore-edge painting executed ca. 1930 by the "Dover Painter" depicting a view of Chichester Cathedral. The distinctive treatment of the clouds and pointillistic brush strokes for detail are hallmarks of the style of the extremely skillful artist known as the "Dover Painter," the name given by Jeff Weber to the artist who produced very high quality painted fore-edges in the 1920s and 1930s.
Twelvemo (6 1/4 x 3 7/8 inches; 160 x 98 mm.). [ii], [i]-lxxii, [2], [1]-150 pp. Engraved frontispiece portrait of William Collins with original tissue-guard.
Bound by Hayday (stamped in black on front paste-down. With the label of "W.H. Dalton/Bookeller & Stationer/28 Cockspur St. Charing Cross" also on front past-down. Full contemporary dark green hard-grain morocco, covers bordered in blind, spine with five raised bands ruled in blind and lettered in gilt in compartments. Blind decorated board-edges and turn-ins, cream coated endpapers, all edges gilt. Expertly and invisibly rebacked with the original spine laid down. A near fine example.
On the front free-endpaper in pencil "Listed in Weber 1949 p. 170 - copy from Scarsdale Public Lib."
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…
William Collins (1721 -1759) was an English poet. Second in influence only to Thomas Gray, he was an important poet of the middle decades of the 18th century. His lyrical odes mark a progression from the Augustan poetry of Alexander Pope's generation and towards the imaginative ideal of the Romantic era.
Provenance: Thomas Thorpe catalogue 150 [issued ca. 1931] item # 303; Weber. 1001 Fore-Edge Paintings, p.170; Purchased by Zeitlin & Ver Brugge from Mrs. Estelle Berman, Yonkers, NY, (December 1984); Sold to Randall Moscovitz.
Price: $2,250.00