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Paris: Jean Moyreau, 1737. Folio (560mm x 435mm): with 45 hand-colored plates (of a total possible count of 100, lacking the portrait), of which 6 are double-pages. Bound in contemporary morocco by Manoury (re-jointed, with repairs to the had and tail). This work is composed entirely of very large folio engraved plates depicting landscapes, hunting scenes, and battles by Philip Wouvermans (or Wouwermans, 1619-1668), a Dutch painter renowned for his exceptional and highly sought-after depictions of horses. The present collection contains a wide variety of subjects from a humorous "traffic jam" on a rural road that results in a pitcher of spilt milk, to more sombre depictions of warfare but the common thread throughout all of these images is the presence of horses and deference to equine culture. As Benezit tells us, "Many artists have painted horses, but none with such devotion, none who cared about the social life of the animal, so to speak. He painted as a technician but also as a poet." According to Bryan, these engravings are the most significant work of Jean Moyreau, a French printmaker and publisher who was admitted into the Académie française in 1736. Lewine tells us that Moyreau engraved a total of 78 plates after Wouvermans (the last being in 1754), and that "other artists have done work in the engraving line after Wouvermans up to 1780, and these later productions are often found added in large or small numbers;" as a result, "copies differ as regards the number of plates, as they were published at intervals." Lewine records as many as 106 plates in a single copy, but bibliographies usually record a maximum of 100. Regardless of the number of plates present, this work is very rare on the market: RBH records just four copies in more than 40 years, only one of which was "complete" with 100 plates. Cohen-de Ricci 1068; Lewine, p. 576; Benezit IX, 1426 and XIV, 1096; Bryan III, 378. N° de ref. del artículo T000254

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