Oberammergau. Scenes from the Passion Play. A Set of twenty-four…

Folio (420 × 320 mm), 24 hand-coloured tinted lithographs, pasted letterpress captions. Original printed blue upper wrapper preserved, late nineteenth-century panelled morocco, gilt, by Bickers & Son. The wrapper with manuscript addition of the artist’s name to her initials and the presentation inscription ‘Major Best with the author’s love’. Bookplate of [Major] M. G. Best [of Boxley Abbey, Kent]. Some foxing to plates (mainly marginal) and (rather more heavily) to the wrapper, binding rubbed at corners. A very good copy.

By an otherwise unidentified female artist, this is a rare large-format album of lithographs of the famous catholic Bavarian passion play at Oberammergau. The artist’s name is given only as initials ‘M. C. S. D’ on the plates and wrapper, but this copy bears a contemporary manuscript addition to the initials, which thus reads ‘M. C. S. Dawkins done by Herself’. It is additionally inscribed ‘with love’ to Major M. G. Best.

Performed decennially since 1634, the Oberammergau plays told the story of Christ’s passion, with a large cast drawn from local villages forming immense tableaux vivants with spoken biblical texts in the vernacular. In the nineteenth century it became a major attraction for well-to-do Grand Tourists and drew significant numbers of English visitors (so much so that the pioneering travel agent Thomas Cook established an Oberammergau office in 1880). The passion play was widely reported in contemporary English-language journals, adding to its attraction among English visitors (mainly protestant) who were curious about this ancient catholic theatrical tradition. We have been unable to discover anything substantial about the artist, but its fair to assume she made the journey to Oberammergau herself. WorldCat lists the V&A copy only in the UK. In the US there are copies at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake (IL) and WRHS (OH).