Voyage en Engleterre

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With Twenty Eight Fine Hand Coloured Lithographed Plates Depicting Scenes of Family and Street Life in England. [1829-1830] Title and imprint from front wrapper, large folio, bound without the four leaves of descriptive text, twenty eight numbered plates containing twenty nine hand coloured lithographs (pl No 10 with two lithographs) by Lami (seventeen), Monnier (ten), and both artists (one). Plates lithographed by Villain, most plates with imprint at bottom left, Publie a Paris par Firmin-Didot et Lami-Denozan, Libraries, and at bottom right: London published 1829 [or 30] by Colnaghi so & Co. No. 11, Pall-Mall-East. In addition to the twenty four plates described in the four leaves of text, this copy contains the following plates: Club de Fermiers (No 26); Un Trottoir dans la Cite (No 29, changed in pencil to No 26); Crescent-Park (No 27); and un Salon (No 28). Contemporary quarter red roan over marbled boards, smooth spine decoratively tooled and lettered in gilt, original printed front wrapper bound in, short marginal tear to plate No 22, not affecting image, a few additional tiny marginal repairs. Book label to fpd (James Hazen Hyde 1876-1959). (402*274 mm). (Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, 139. Abbey Scenery 34. Colas 1748. Hiler p524. Lipperheide 995 (all calling for twenty four plates). This elegant and brilliant painter [Eugène Lami, 1800-1890] devoted much of his time to lithography between 1817 and 1833. The son of an Empire bureaucrat, he grew up in Paris. Beginning in 1815, he studied painting with Horace Vernet and afterwards in the studio of Baron Gros.To support himself he made lithographs for several albums, including in 1822 a Collection des uniformes des armées françaises, de 1791 à 1814. Lami paid his first visit to England in 1826, during which he drew the sketches which resulted in his Souvenirs de Londres. He fell in with Henry Monnier, already an expert in things English, and under his guidance comprehensively explored London and the countryside. Indeed, Monnier provided more than a third of the twenty-eight designs which make up Lami's finest album, the Voyage en Angleterre. It is here that for the first time Lami struck his distinctive note in lithography. These precise and sparkling plates, which show England in its most attractive aspects, brought the lithographic recording of the passing scenes to an unprecedented level of grace and refinement (Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, p. 203). Lami's lithographs in this album have a salience and solidity otherwise unmatched in his work, and the bright yet harmonious coloring with which they were completed makes them hardly distinguishable from watercolors. The series also has the interest of showing English life and customs as seen through the fresh eyes of two shrewd foreigners. They emphasize the freedom and well-being of the people, which combine to ensure 'order in, apparent disorder' (text for no. 20). Coachmen, turnpike keepers, footmen, merchants, farmers, and workmen all behave with ease and confidence. The many glimpses of country and village life exude tranquility. The social order of which these men and women are a part is fixed but not oppressive. In 'Evening prayer' (no. 17), there is a solidarity about the household at its devotions, even if the family takes its ease on one side of the room, while the servants are huddled together on the other. The culminating plate of the album, in which both artists had a hand, shows Parliament Street in London during the evening rush hour (no. 20). It is a microcosm of the city's 'busy scene of crowded life,' soldiers drilling at the rear, carriages criss-crossing, and all sorts and conditions of men going their various ways in the foreground (Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, pp. 204-205). An Excellent Copy.