I have been in the rare and antiquarian book business for over forty years; my family has been in the rare books business since 1876. Rare books are in my blood.
Vie de château, La
Paris: Chez Gihaut frères, 1832. Item #05284
Ten Charming Hand-Colored Lithographs of French Upper Class Country Life
LAMI, Eugène. La Vie de château. [Second Series]. Paris: Chez Gihaut frères, éditeurs, [n.d., 1832-1833].
Oblong folio volume (10 1/4 x 13 1/8 inches; 260 x 333 mm.). Ten numbered hand-colored lithographed plates. Some light, mainly marginal foxing but still an excellent example of this very rare suite of hand colored lithographs.
Contemporary quarter brown straight-grain morocco over dark maroon patterned cloth boards, smooth spine decoratively tooled and lettered in gilt, plain endpapers. With the bookplate of Bibliothek Fritz Kirchhoff on front pastedown. Head and tail of spine worn, joints cracked but firm.
In this second series, all of the plates have the imprint: “I. lith. de Gihaut frères éditeurs,” and plate Nos. 5, 6, and 7 are dated 1832.
We have only seen this book once before - we sold both series together in 2010.
“This elegant and brilliant painter devoted much of his time to lithography between 1817 and 1833. The son of an Empire bureaucrat, [Lami] grew up in Paris. Beginning in 1815, he studied painting with Horace Vernet and afterwards in the studio of Baron Gros… To support himself he made lithographs for several albums, including in 1822 a Collection des uniformes des armées françaises, de 1791 à 1814… Lami paid his first visit to England in 1826, during which he drew the sketches which resulted in his Souvenirs de Londres… under [Henry Monnier’s] guidance [he] comprehensively explored London and the countryside. Indeed, Monnier provided more than a third of the twenty-eight designs which make up Lami’s finest album, the Voyage en Angleterre. It is here that for the first time Lami struck his distinctive note in lithography… Lami’s Tribulations de gens à équipages of 1827 and Six quartiers de Paris… treat French subjects in the same manner… After Lami gained recognition as a painter, he became a frequenter of the fashionable world, which he rendered with sympathy and brio. His chief albums of this kind are the charming Vie de château, published in two series in 1828 and 1833, and the Quadrille de Marie Stuart” (Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, p. 203).
Second Series Plates:
No. 1. “L’arrivée. J’arrive bien crotté, bien mouillé, heureux de trouver la redingotte de mon hôte”
No. 2. “La promenade après diner”
No. 3. “La nôce de la fille du fermier”
No. 4. “Les anglais du voisinage”
No. 5. “Notre-Dame de Paris”
No. 6. “La Course en Sac”
No. 7. “La manie de la Gruelle”
No. 8. “Le fils du fermier”
No. 9. “Causeries du soir”
No. 10. “Le départ pour la promenade”
Bobins II, 534; Lemoisne, Lami, p. 383; Rahir, La Bibliothèque de l’amateur, p. 362.
Price: $2,750.00