TYPES MILITAIRES ETRANGERS; PARIS ASSIEGE; SOUVENIRS DU SIEGE DE PARIS; LES SOLDATS DE LA REPUBLIQUE. 4 vols bound as one. Signed copy.

Descripción

Renard, a Belgian, was an enthusiastic and much admired caricaturist of military types and their uniforms. He was born in 1833 and lived till 1926. The plates of the first volume 'Types' were, we believe, published from about 1862. The others over the ensuing years. We suspect various collections of the Types may have been published as they progressed, as many more of these plates were eventually created. These plates only bear three pieces of information: the country of the soldier depicted at the top; the title of the plate at the bottom; and in the bottom right corner "Lith. H. Sicard". They are on a thicker card. No other details commonly seen are present. This collection is also signed by Michael de Stempel, dated Paris [19]51. One wonders if this must be the Michael de Stempel who married Susan Wilberforce, descendant of the abolisher of slavery, who was tried and sentenced for the defrauding of Lady Illingworth, her aunt, of a £1m or so, and tried but acquitted for the murder of her husband, Simon Dale. Types Militaires has 20 plates plus decorated title page. The execution of the colouring is more thorough and decorative in this series. The other three have 31 plates plus decorated title. All are hand coloured. Many illustrations have light wear around the edges with short closed tears and occasional chipping but not often penetrating the image or captions. In the second and third the page has been cut for binding with slight loss of the top of the letters of the presentation. However, Souvenirs has nine plates with closed tears crossing the image or caption, some almost torn across, and plate 3 has lost its bottom right quarter. The final illustration of vol 4 has some cuts in the margin of the page not affecting the image. Plates are mostly very good if with a little light staining and browning. The endpapers are desiccated. Disbound but with the upper board present and entitled in gilt "Draner/Albums/Militaire". As well as delightfully comic, the pictures show a great variety of costumes and uniforms of the period, all done with great accuracy of detail. All four vols are presentation copies, undated, to a M. Dubois. Only the first bears the ownership signature of Michael de Stempel. A letter from Draner is tipped in to the second vol. Also to M. Dubois, a collector of books on the Siege of Paris, it is dated 25th Juillet 1872. In it he offers the latter three vols together, and remembers poignantly the deprivations of the Siege, which, he humbly suggests, show, not only in the poor production qualities of the books, but also in the period's reliance on his own meager talents to depict it. N° de ref. del artículo A.DRANERTYME

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