RAFFET, [Denis August Marie]

Croquis pour l'amusement des enfans

Paris: Gihaut Frères, 1829. Item #05444

Sketches for the Amusement of Children
An Early Work by Raffet

RAFFET, [Denis August Marie]. Croquis pour l'amusement des enfans… Paris & London: Chez Gihaut Frères & McLean, 1829.

First edition [first series only]. Oblong quarto (12 3/8 x 9 inches; 314 x 229 mm.).

Pictorial lithograph title-page and ten fine lithograph plates, each with multiple images. Lower margins trimmed a little short affecting a few imprints. Some scattered light foxing. A very good copy of this scarce little book.

Contemporary diced red paper over boards, expertly rebacked in red calf, smooth spine decoratively gilt, marbled endpapers.

We have only seen this title once in over fifty-five years - twenty years ago, also the first series only - it was bound together with a collection of plates by Charles Philipon & Henry Monnier and now resides in a private collection.

OCLC locates just one example in libraries & institutions worldwide: Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsrue (Germany).
We have been unable to locate any complete copy at auction over the past 100 years.

Denis Auguste Marie Raffet (1804-1860) was a French illustrator and lithographer. He was a student of Nicolas Toussaint Charlet, and was a retrospective painter of the Empire. At an early age he was apprenticed to a wood turner, but took up the study of art at evening classes. At the age of 18 he entered the workshop of Cabanel, where he applied his skill to the decoration of china, and where he met Rudor, from whom he received instruction in lithography, in the practice of which he was to rise to fame. He was a contemporary of other French artist-lithographers of Napoleon and the French army including Hippolyte Bellangé, Horace Vernet, and Nicolas Toussaint Charlet. As an illustrator his activity was prodigious, the list of works illustrated by his crayon amounting to about forty-five, among which are Béranger's poems, the History of the Revolution by Adolphe Thiers,and the History of Napoleon by de Norvins.`.

Price: $450.00