Scraps from The Sketch Book of Henry Alken, Engraved by Himself. Containing Forty-Two Plates.

Additional information

First edition, VG. In half white calf over Spanish marbled boards, with two green morocco lettering labels on the spine, tooled and lettered in gilt, covers ruled in gilt. Internally, frontis, title page, forty two hand coloured plates (Broadsides) of soft-ground etchings, mostly depicting hunting or military scenes with horses by Alken, paper watermarked Whatman 1820, some foxing and browning to margins, but an excellent Copy. This edition was first published in 1821 as uncoloured on Whatman 1820 watermarked paper. A second edition appeared in 1823, with the same drawings (in a different order), all hand-coloured, and on Whatman 1822 watermarked paper. This particular volume may be unique, or possibly one of several copies which was hand-coloured out of the 1821 edition. Hardie, as well as Schwerdt mention the 1821 edition as being uncoloured, rendering this coloured copy quite rare. Additionally, there are no institutional copies listed non OCLC, and there have been no copies appear at auction in the last twenty-five years, coloured or uncoloured. From 1816 to 1824, Alken published several drawing books, illustrated by uncoloured soft-ground etchings or lithographs.. Among those are... Sketches of Cattle, and Rudiments for Drawing the Horse (1822). Scraps from the Sketch Book (1821), [the work offered here]; A Sporting Scrap Book (1824), and Sketches (1824) are in reality drawing books, but aim at a wider popularity by giving groups and scenes that have a certain life and interest apart from their value for a copyist... His appeal is the sportsman who wishes every horse that meets his eye in book or print to be a creature of blood and mettle, a potential winner of the Derby or the Oaks. (Hardie p178-180). (282*223 mm). (Schwerdt p21; Hardie p179. Not listed in Tooley or Abbey)