WATTIER, Émile

Un an de la vie d'une jeune fille

Paris: Chez G. Engelmann [et] Gihaut, 1824. Item #05536

The Life of a Young Girl who Follows the Wrong Path and Loses her Honor…
Depicted in Seventeen Hand Colored Lithographs by Émile Wattier

WATTIER, Émile, illustrator. Un An de la vie d’une jeune fille, Roman Historique en XVII chapitres, écrits par son confident et lithographiés par M. Wattier. Paris: Chez G. Engelmann [et] Gihaut, 1824.

First edition. Large quarto (13 1/4 x 10 inches; 335 x 254 mm.). Facsimile cover title. Seventeen hand-colored lithographed plates by Engelmann after Wattier.

Modern maroon cloth, front cover with facsimile title pasted on.

The seventeen charming plates by Émile Wattier (1800-1868) depict a young girl meeting and falling in love with a handsome young man, her liaison with him, and subsequent pregnancy, her receiving a letter saying that he has gone away, and finally her arranged marriage to a much older man.

Scarce. No copies have appeared at auction over the past 100 years; OCLC locates just four copies in libraries and institutions worldwide: Library of Congress (DC, USA); Morgan Library & Museum (NY, USA); Bibliotheque Nationale de France, and the Kunstbiblio Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
In over fifty-five years we have only ever handled one other copy which we sold to a private collector in 2001.

The plates:

“Chap. I. Mais, voyez donc comme il me suit.”
Chap. II. Vous êtes bien hardi!”
“Chap. III. Serez-vous inexorable”
"Chap. IV. Comme il dit bien!”
"Chap. V. Que lui répondre?”
"Chap. VI. Il est charmant!”
"Chap VII. Il m’attendait!”
"Chap. VIII. Ah! si maman me voyait…”
"Chap. IX. Cher ami!!”
"Chap: X. Helas.”
"Chap: XI. Il ne vient points?”
"Chap: XII. Il est parti!…”
"Chap: XIII. Vains regrets.”
"Chap. XIV: Elle y entre.”
"Chap: XV. Elle en sort”
"Chap: XVI. On la marie."
"Chap: XVII. Je suis… heureux, C’est sur!”

Émile Wattier (1800-1868). French painter and lithographer. "Wattier published this book in the same year as Victor Adam issued Un an de la vie d'un jeune homme: Histoire véritable en 17 Chapiteres. Paris: Sazerac et Duval, 1824, which follows a similar trajectory but with Adam's hero being a young man. There are evident parallels between the two works in that both titles seem to have been influenced by William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress." (Bobins).

Bobins V 1556; Lipperheide 3695; Rahir, p. 364.

Price: $3,850.00