GAVARNI, Paul [pseudonym of Guillaume Sulpice Chevallier]

Paris le matin [And:] Paris le soir

Paris: Chez Bauger [and] Chez Aubert, 1839. Item #06172

“Paris in the Morning” and “Paris at Night”

GAVARNI [pseudonym of Guillaume Sulpice Chevallier]. Paris le matin. [Paris: Au Bureau du Charivari, n.d., 1839]. Twelve numbered lithographed plates, depicting Parisian life in the morning. Plates printed by Aubert & Cie.

[and]

Paris le soir. [Paris: Chez Bauger [and] Chez Aubert, n.d., 1840]. Twenty-five numbered lithographed plates depicting Parisian life at night. Plates printed by Aubert & Cie.

Large quarto (13 3/8 x 10 1/2 inches; 340 x 267 mm.). Thirty-seven fine lithographed plates, complete. A few plates with light foxing to blank margins.

Bound by Thierry sc. de Petit-Simier (stamp-signed) in late nineteenth century quarter red diced calf over marbled boards, smooth spine decoratively tooled and lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers. Joints expertly repaired. A fine example.

“In 1837 Gavarni began his connection with Le charivari, which did not conclude until 1848. In all he drew 1054 lithographs for his journal…Most of these appeared in series, some twenty-five of which extend to ten or more plates, and were afterwards published by Aubert in albums. Perhaps the best of these collections are Fourberies de femmes en matière de sentiment, Les étudiants de Paris, Les débardeurs, and Les lorettes; but some of the rest are of hardly inferior interest. Still further series, contributed to periodicals other than Le charivari, were also issued as albums. Baudelaire had this part of Gavarni’s work particularly in mind when he wrote…that ‘the true glory and the true mission of Gavarni and Daumier has been to complete Balzac.’ Certainly the pictures of Parisian society provided by the two artists perfectly complement each other. Daumier’s preoccupation was the working middle class with faces and figures heavily marked by life. Gavarni remained for the most part outside the humdrum bourgeois round. He preferred to show ‘youth at the prow and pleasure at the helm.’ His pretty girls and sleek young men are bent on enjoyment. They live lives of graceful dissipation” (Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, p. 217).

Armelhault & Bocher 902-913 & 914-933.

Price: $2,250.00