Victoria Illustrated. Second Series, with Descriptive Letterpress

Oblong 4to., (6 3/8 x 9 6/8 inches). Additional engraved title-page with fine vignette of Point Gellibrand, 41 steel engraved plates on heavy stock all with ORIGINAL HAND-COLOUR HEIGHTENED WITH GUM ARABIC, interleaved with pages of descriptive text (last plate with vertical crease, some offsetting of plates onto text, one or two pale stains, some light toning). Original maroon morocco, gilt, all edges gilt (extremities a bit scuffed). Provenance: from the library of Jacques Levy, his sale, Sotheby's, 20th April 2012, lot 335 RARE COLOURED COPY. The very successful first series, after drawings by Gill, was published in 1857, and this the much rarer second series was designed as a companion volume. As Gill had since moved to Sydney, and was in decline, this second volume included the work of a number of other artists as well, including the celebrated Nicholas Chevalier, who is credited on the title-page vignette, all other plates are unsigned. This is an important historical record of Victorian Victoria in Australia, including detailed images of prominent and important buildings such as Banks, the Melbourne Club, hospitals, schools, the Bridge over the Yarra, and many river views. Gill emigrated to Australia with his family in 1839, by 1852 he had arrived at the Victorian gold diggings, "and in the next twenty years produced drawings of Victoria and New South Wales, many published as lithographs. Evidence of visits to New South Wales in 1856 and 1861 exists in the form of lithographs of scenes in that colony in those years. Twenty-four lithographed sketches by Gill, 'Victoria Gold Diggings and Diggers As They Are', were published in Melbourne and London in 1853; moreover, most of the illustrations in 'The Gold-Finder of Australia; How He Went, How He Fared, And How He Made His Fortune' (London, 1853), said to have been edited but probably actually written by John Sherer, were taken from the book. In the 1850s Gill had a studio in Collins Street, Melbourne, over the premises of James J. Blundell & Co., booksellers and publishers. 'Victoria Illustrated', a book of steel engravings, not engraved by Gill but after his drawings, was published in Australia in 1857, and the colour lithographs in Edward Wilson's 'Rambles at the Antipodes' (London, 1859) are after Gill's drawings. Gill's 'Scenery in and Around Sydney' (1856) appeared in two parts, each including six 'lithographic sketches'. Several editions were published of 'The Australian Sketchbook' by S. T. G., a portfolio of lithographed views, mostly of rural life. In 1869 he was commissioned by the trustees of the Melbourne Public Library to do forty sketches of the Victorian goldfields during 1852-53" (Australian Dictionary of Biography online). Chevalier emigrated from Russia to Australia in 1855, and while illustrating for Punch and exhibiting his watercolours introduced chromolithography Victoria "where it became an important and flourishing art. He exhibited some of his delicately painted water- colours in December 1856 at the exhibition in Melbourne from which sprang the Society of Fine Arts. As an oil painter he was less successful, although his oil, 'The Buffalo Ranges', was selected as the best painting by a resident Victorian in an exhibition sponsored by the government in 1864. It was bought for £200, the first Australian painting obtained for the new National Gallery of Victoria. He continued to paint in oil and water-colour, often travelling about the countryside. His rather grandiose works in the style of the later Romantics were then popular, but his skilled technique, attention to detail and prolific output did not produce great painting. Although he had opportunities to observe much of interest, his over-conventionalized works lacked the atmosphere and inspiration of some contemporaries; probably his influence and importance as a personality were greater than his ability as an artist" (Australian Dictionary of Biography online).Ferguson, 9924b; Wantrup, 261. Cata.…