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.
Croquis d'Expressions. Nos. 51- 75
Paris: Chez Aubert gal. Véro-Dodat, 1838. Item #05475
Henri Daniel Plattel's “Sketches of Expressions”
The Continuation of Honoré Daumier's Croquis D'Expressions
PLATTEL, Henri Daniel. & DAUMIER, Honore. Croquis d'Expressions. Nos. 51- 75. [Paris]: Chez Aubert gal. Véro-Dodat, [January 18th, 1838 - July 4th, 1839].
Oblong folio (10 1/8 x 13 1/8 inches; 257 x 333 mm.). Twenty-five hand colored lithographed plates numbered from 51 thru 75, all heightened with gum arabic. Twenty-two of which are by Henri Plattel and three by Honoré Daumier.
Plate no. 51 with two (repaired on verso) lower marginal short tears (1/2 inch) neither affecting image; plate no. 63 slightly shorter at lower margin and with small 1/2 inch tear just affecting lettering beneath image. Some light occasional marginal foxing or staining but still an exceptional example of this exceptionally rare suite.
Publisher's dark blue diced cloth over boards, front cover decoratively lettered in gilt, spine expertly and almost invisibly repaired, pale yellow endpapers. Previous owner's detailed description on front paste-down stating that this album was purchased in March 1987. Small unidentified bookplate on front free-endpaper. Sixteen page Aubert catalog with separate title leaf bound in at end.
OCLC/KVK locate no complete copies in libraries and institutions worldwide.
We have been unable to locate any copies appearing at auction over the past one hundred years.
In over fifty-five years I have only ever seen one other album containing the first fifty-five (1-53 by Daumier, 54-55 by Plattel) - the Bobins copy, - I have never before seen plate numbers 54-100 which were done by Henri Daniel Plattel & Jules Plattier (DJB).
"If the true glory and the true mission of Gavarni and Daumier has been to complete Balzac, as already noted, Daumier made his contribution largely through these plates, which, at least in the case of the more substantial sequences, were collected by Aubert in albums." (Bobins III, 926).
Henri Daniel Plattel (1803-1859). French satirist printmaker working in lithography. He contributed two of the fifty-five hand colored lithographs in Honoré Daumier's Croquis d'Expressions, [Paris]: Chez Aubert gal. véro-dodat, [1 January 1838 -7 April 1839] and then together with Jules Platier went on to continue the title with forty-seven more hand colored lithographs which were published between 1838 and 1839. Again, with Jules Platier he contributed several of the hand colored lithographs for Honoré Daumier's Ces Amours d’enfans. Joies et Douceurs de la Paternité. Paris: Aubert & Cie, [n.d., ca. 1850]. He also illustrated L'Alsacienne à Paris. Paris: Genty, Editeur, [1829]. Four of his lithographs are in the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum ij St. Louis and one of his portraits is in the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Croquis d’Expressions (Sketches of Expressions) is a series of 100 lithographs, of which Nos. 1-53 were by Daumier and 54-100 by Plattel and Platier. Forty-nine lithographs were published in Le Charivari from January 1, 1838 to April 7, 1839. Some of the lithographs (Nos. 12, 27, 30, 34, 35 ) appeared also or only in La Caricature. Two of the lithographs (Delteil 490 and Delteil 549) were never published (see The Daumier Register at http://www.daumier-register.org).
“This was a series of 100 lithographs, of which Daumier drew 53. After the demise of La Caricature in 1835, Daumier devoted his lithos to the satire of manners, these Sketches of Expressions covering such topics as contrasting points of view, the daily misunderstandings between friends, married couples, family disputes, and legal and theatrical subjects. In many of his theater sketches, his inspiration came from the classic theater and from recalling plays read aloud by his father and those he attended on newspaper passes” (Daumier: 120 Great Lithographs, p. 124, No. 16 (“Pour aller jusqu’au cœur que vous voulez percer…”)).
“The central panel in [Daumier’s] ‘immense satirical fresco of the French bourgeoisie during the first half of the nineteenth century’ (Champfleury, quoted by Beraldi, V, 108) is constituted by four major series: Les beaux jours de la vie, Moeurs conjugales, Le bons bourgeois, eighty-two plates, 1847-1849, and Tout ce qu’on voudra, seventy plates, 1847-1851. These display the private lives of the middle class generally, as do such shorter albums as Croquis d’expression[s], fifty-three plates, 1838-1839, and Emotions parisiens, fifty-one plates, 1839-1842” (Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, p. 230).
Delteil Nos. 1407-1409.
Price: $9,500.00