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A separately issued suite, presumably produced for sale in America, of Von Bayros’extraordinary illustrations (reproduced from watercolours) for the elaborate edition of Dante issued by Amalthea in Vienna in 1921.

One of 237 copies (number 211, one of 185 on Vélin de Montval). Sylvain Sauvage ws the pseudonym of the artist Félix Roy (1888-1948). He later illustrated the Nonesuch edition of Candide. Worldcat lists no copies outside continental Europe.

Number 40 of 110 copies printed for the Société des Amis des Livres, this one for Baron Roger Portalis (a founder member of this bibliophilic circle, and an eminent historian of engraving) This is an especially elegant belle-époqe edition of the Parnassian poet Leconte de Lisle’s first collection (first published in 1852) with a sequence of highly-refined illustrations by Maurice Ray. The binding is by Georges Huser (1879-1961), who had worked for binders David, Noulhac and Lemardeley before establishing himself independently as the latter’s successor in 1903.

Number 47 of 95 copies on Hollande (after three on Vieux Japon and seven on Japon impérial) with superb illustrations by the Russian-born Montparnasse artist Alexeieff, who was later better known for pioneering pinscreen animation. The bold typography is accompanied by large red initials, specially cut and cast for this edition after designs by R. Van Kleen, while the striking lithographs were printed by Duchâtel and coloured at the ateliers d’Art Nervet. Giraudoux’s novel was first published in 1922 and tells the story of the French soldier who forged an unlikely career as a German lawyer following total amnesia brought on by an injury sustained fighting in the Great War. It was published in more than one illustrated edition of the 1920s, but Alexeieff’s strange, teasing and often ambiguous images are especially well suited to the text. Rare: Worldcat cites the Northwestern University copy as the only US institutional holding. No UK copies in LibraryHub.

First edition with the extraordinary decadent illustrations by ‘Alastair’ (pseudonym of German-born artist Hand Venning Voight). It is one of the most attractive books of the Black Sun Press, founded and operated in Paris by the American expatriates Harry and Caresse Crosby. The translation from the French is Ernest Dowson’s (which had first appeared in 1898, commissioned by Leonard Smithers). This is one of 1000 copies on Moirans paper (after 15 Japon and 5 hors commerce copies). Minkoff A-31.

First edition of Boylesve’s modern-day fairytale, with Barbier’s illustrations (the story first appeared in 1920). One of 300 copies (this one on standard paper).

First edition with Barbier’s illustrations. One of 800 on Rives (of a total edition of 1200). The poems of Verlaine’s Fêtes galantes (first published in 1869) took inspiration from the pastorals of Watteau, as well as the sumptuous fantasies of Fragonard and Boucher, while drawing characters from the Italian traditions of the commedia dell’arte. Barbier’s sensibilities made him the perfect artist to reinterpret Verlaine for the 1920s.

First edition with Barbier’s illustrations. Number LX of 175 copies (on Japon) for America (the total edition was 1200 copies). The poems of Verlaine’s Fêtes galantes (first published in 1869) took inspiration from the pastorals of Watteau, as well as the sumptuous fantasies of Fragonard and Boucher, while drawing characters from the Italian traditions of the commedia dell’arte. Barbier’s sensibilities made him the perfect artist to reinterpret Verlaine for the 1920s.

Number 282 of 839 copies on Rives (of a total edition of 1000). La double Maîtresse (1900) was the symbolist poet’s first novel – a tale of a tyrannical mother, a troubled son, a provocative cousin and an unscrupulous courtesan. Barbier brings his own brand of wit and sensuality to bear upon in his extensive illustrative scheme which includes full-page illustrations, vignettes and humorous initials.

First edition of this appreciation of George Barbier, the tenth issue of the collection, Les Artistes du Livre. One of 700 copies (on papier vélin).

First edition. Barbier designed the sets and costumes for the Bouffes-Parisiens production of Maurice Rostand’s Casanova in February 1919. The 24 fine costume plates here are coloured by Jacomet et compagnie.
The commission for Casanova was an important moment in Barbier’s artistic career, leading to commissions with theatres, the Ballet Russes and the Folies Bergère. Other successes followed, and for a time he was the most sought-after costume designer in Paris, recognized as the theatrical artist ‘who better than any other had captured the mood of the age’ (Gordon Ray).

First edition, one of 1000 copies, complete with the additional lithograph (’Madina’) and etching (’Petite Tzigane à Epsom’). An appreciation of the work of the artist which includes a listing of her works in public collections and a valuable bibliography of her illustrated books. It is an important retrospective of Lydis’s European works before she left for England and ultimately Argentina.

First edition. A striking early Lydis production. Each plate is accompanied by an exotic love lyric by Schwabach (publisher, author and patron of Expressionism) ‘Die verliebten Billete des Prinzen Salamu’. The 18 plates reproduce Lydis’ orientalist miniatures in collotype and lithograph with gold and silver. The Müller firm had been established at Potsdam 1919 by Irmgard Kiepenheuer and Hans Müller. Kiepenhauer was an important figure in the artistic world of Weimar Berlin, hosting a cultural salon in Potsdam and being in personal contact with the most important contemporary artists — including many from the Bauhaus in Weimar. The firm issued several influential portfolios showcasing artists such as Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Pechstein, Christian Rohlfs, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. One of 1100 copies (of which 100 were signed).

King 579 (William Harry Rogers, King’s example in red).

King, Victorian Decorated Trade Bindings (British Library & Oak Knoll, 2003) 613 (by John Sleigh).

Number 978 (on Rives) of a total edition of 1000 copies. La Pécheresse (’The Sinner’) was first published in 1912.

A rare publisher’s advert for a short-lived satirical almanac devoted to the comic lowlife of the Parisian Latin Quarter, with its famously hedonistic students and lorettes courtesans or sex workers). The lorette emerged both in reality and in the popular imagination during the July Monarchy (1830-48), named after the Right Bank church of Notre Dame de Lorette where they were thought to reside and the almanac promises a range of playful gender inverting fun based on the ‘Vésuviennes’ (popular heroines of the 1848 revolution who donned uniform and took to the barricades) including the confessions of a Vésuvienne and their ‘Charte-Constitution’.
During the February Revolution of 1848, French women briefly hoped for political rights and an improvement in their social situation. Such hopes were short-lived and popular reaction was expressed in satires like this. The complex image of the Vésuvienne woman warrior, both pleasantly seductive and scandalously rebellious. She appeared in all the major newspapers, while real women in the streets claimed this title by parading under a Vesuvian banner. Their morality was often called into question and it is no surprise to see lorettes and Vésuviennes share a billing here. In Belhomme’s lithograph, three lorettes step out of basket (one thumbing her nose); a reflection of a popular contemporary song ‘Le Panier aux lorettes’.

The Arundel Societies superb colour printed version of Hans Memling’s Jan Floreins Triptych, copied by Christian Schultz.
The Society was founded in 1849 at a meeting in the house of the painter Charles Eastlake, who became the first Director of The National Gallery, and was named after the Earl of Arundel, collector and patron - a man whom Horace Walpole described as the ‘father of Vertue in England’. The Society saw the progress of art in England as being dependent on popular taste. It was established with the aim to promote a greater knowledge of art through the publication of literary works and high quality reproductions of Italian fresco cycles, classical art and a handful of Northern European masterpieces. John Ruskin was an early member. Many modern British artists who did not travel, including the Pre-Raphaelites, and many collectors and an entire art-hungry class were only familiar with the Old Masters in colour through Arundel Society prints. The Society was discontinued in 1897, when it was overwhelmed by the use of photography.
The prints did not rely on photography and were not made directly from the original paintings. Instead from 1852 skilled copyists were sent out across Europe (by Henry Layard of the Society) to make smaller, very accurate water- and body-colour copies directly from the originals, probably using Windsor and Newton ‘Moist Colours’ in zinc tubes, which had been available from 1846. Each colour used was given its own lithographic stone, and up to 20 stones were drawn upon by hand and printed from to build a composite colour image. Standardising the colours throughout the complex process produced rather saturated but faithful copies, entirely by hand, before colour photography. Perhaps the greatest copyist, Christian Schultz, was also a lithographer.
Memling painted this triptych in 1479 for brother Jan Floreins of the Oud Sint-Janshospitaal in Bruges, where it remains as part of the collection of the Memlingmuseum. He probably depicted himself to the left of the central panel, where he kneels behind a wall, holding an open book. The two panels on the verso of the wings, which are visible when closed, depict John the Baptist and Saint Veronica. The patron’s initials ‘IK’ are visible in the margins and these two panels include a trompe l’oeil lock which visually ‘fastens’ as the triptych is closed - reproduced faithfully in the Arundel copy. The Society made facsimiles of only two Flemish artists: Van Eyck (The Ghent Altarpiece) and Memling (The Lubeck altarpiece and the present Jan Floreins triptych). W. Noel Johnson, A Handbook (Catalogue raisonné) to the Collection of Chromo-lithographs from Copies of important Works of Ancient Masters, published by the Arundel Society: with historical and special artistic Record and Notes (1907) 182-6.

A large and full album containing accomplished watercolours and a selection of contemporary prints.
The original drawings and watercolours here (together with the more significant prints) display a distinctly romantic sensibility, with mountain and lakeland scenes (and more than a hint of the cult of the sublime) and other rural subjects of cottages and cottagers. Some of the views are obviously of Britain, while others are continental (specifically alpine). The majority are unsigned, though a number are by the same very accomplished amateur hand, with others by less schooled, perhaps juvenile hands. The whole assemblage is typical of the culture of early Victorian album- and scrapbook keeping, where a female compiler (often a mother) brought together contributions from family, friends and visitors, sometimes recording their travels, but including also subjects painted at home or copied or adapted from other sources. In the latter category are found a fine series of flower paintings, together with drawings in pencil and crayon of animals, a female reader, a cottager with a bundle of firewood, and so on. The principal artist, who contributes the largest and best watercolour views may well be identifiable as Mary Leighton, née Parker (1799-1864), a northern British artist whose work is represented in a sequence of albums closely comparable to ours at the Yale Center for British Art (MSS 16). Not only is the range of materials of our album similar in each case (including watercolour contributions from Leighton’s brother, John Parker) but the style of the best watercolours is close to those by Leighton (examples of here work are digitised by the YCBA, notably the watercolour of Lake Maggiore catalogued as B2009.9.68 in the Printed and Drawings collection, together with others in the V&A collection in London). A recent northern provenance for the album further supports that likelihood.
The contents include:
Six fine watercolours of rural scenes (one mountainous, another captioned ‘Cottage. From nature’), several other sepia watercolour views, probably by the same hand. All unsigned.
Pencil drawing, Warwick Castle, signed ?C.W.W. May 29^th, 1821.
Twelve watercolours of flowers and fruit (including sweet peas, auricula, a rose, geranium, fuchsia and two mixed bouquets). Unsigned.
Silhouette portrait (perhaps a self portrait) of the prolific society silhouettist Auguste Édouart (1789-1861), signed, 1831, mounted on an elaborate lithograph background, plus one other silhouette without background, possibly also his work.
Two watercolour miniatures (85 × 115 mm) by John Parker (1798-1860) of mountain views in North Wales: Trevaen (Tryfan) and Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa), signed, dated 1824 and with manuscript descriptions on versos.
A circular miniature (diameter 85 mm) in sepia wash of a woodland grotto scene, mounted on a bifolium with manuscript caption in German dated 1818 signed Rösel, the miniature attributable to Johann Gottlob Samuel Rösel (1768-1843).
Four large alpine engravings/lithographs (Montblanc, Hospice de Grimsel, Hospice du St Bernard, Chamounix), elaborately hand-coloured.
Numerous usually smaller pencil or crayon drawings, including rural or cottage scenes, animals (a pig and a donkey), marine scenes, children at play, a girl reading etc. In several hands of different competence.
Larger prints include: ‘The Late King’ (Hullmandel, after 1830); ‘Oaklands near Newnham, Gloucestershire’ (Haghe, ?c. 1830s); ‘Rev. Richard Raikes’ [founder of the Sunday School movement] (Hullmandel, n.d.); ‘The Thames Tunnel’ [Harding/Dixie, hand-coloured lithograph, c. 1835]; ‘L’Ingrat’ (Hullmandel, after 1832); ‘Kossynier : Sensenträger’ (Warsaw, c. 1830); ‘Ilfracombe, from Lantern Hill’ (Day & Haghe, c. 1830). There also several smaller lithographs including series of seaside views in Devon (Ilfracombe) and East Kent (Ramsgate and evirons, some locally printed.
Four small continental devotional prints, two with moveable flaps, one metallic.
(From the YCBA catalogue record): Mary Leighton, née Parker, 1799-1864 was the third child of Thomas Netherton Parker (1771-1848) and his wife, Sarah. Her parents must have encouraged their children's creative pursuits, as Mary and her elder brother John both became accomplished amateur artists. Their family was close friends of the Ladies of Llangollen, Eleanor Charlotte Barker (1739-1829) and Sarah Ponsonby (1755-1832), two upper-class Irish women who fled their families and established a home together in North Wales, at Plas Newydd, only fifteen miles from the Parker family estate, Sweeney Hall. Correspondence between Sarah Parker and Sarah Ponsonby, currently in the Denbighshire Record Office archives, reveals that Mary occasionally sent the ladies her drawings, many of which record the grounds of Plas Newydd and the surrounding countryside. The subjects of Mary's drawings also include prominent Grand Tour sites, satirical treatments of contemporary fashions, and thoughtful portraits of friends and family. Notably, the only portrait from life of the Ladies of Llangollen is by Mary's hand. Mary remained an active amateur artist following her 1832 marriage to Baldwin Leighton, 7th Baronet (1805-1871), of Loton Hall. Together they had six children, who Mary actively encouraged in drawing and painting. 

Copy number 5 of 111 copies only printed for Les Cent Une, Société de femmes bibliophiles, with two original pencil drawings and a suite of proof plates. All copies were printed on paper watermarked ‘Les Cent Une’ and this is a tirage de tête copy printed for member, Celeste Pigasse. The text is after the 1556 French edition by André Jaulme (complete with authentic contractions) while the superb visual interpretations by Mariette Lydis include two of her characteristic decorated maps (both are signed). This is one of the early publications for the women’s book collecting club founded in Paris by the Princesse Schakhowskoy in 1926 as a direct riposte to ‘Les Cent’ — a bibliophile circle which then included no women among its members. Les Cent Une issued editions limited to the 101 members only and a handful of collaborators, usually no more than once a year, and the club is still in existence. Celeste Pigasse (née Crouzat) was a founder member and served as the club’s general secretary in its formative years (her husband founded the publishing house Librairie des Champs-Élysées ‘LCE’ whose Le Masque imprint published popular crime and detective fiction, including the French editions of Agatha Christie). Carteret IV, 322.