Salomon GESSNER, Mort d’Abel, with:

Jean-Pierre Claris de FLORIAN, Galatée, Roman Pastoral.

Paris: chez Defer de Maisonneuve, 1793.

2 quarto volumes, matching bindings in contemporary mottled calf gilt, with stipple engravings printed in colors (6 in the Gessner, 4 in the Florian), states before titles.

GESSNER, Salomon

Mort d’Abel, poëme de Gessner, traduit par Hubert.

Édition ornée d’estampes imprimées en couleur, d’après les dessins de M. Monsiau,

peintre de l’Academie.

Paris: chez Defer de Maisonneuve, 1793.

First edition of Hubert’s prose translation of Gessner’s Der Tod Abels, first published in German in 1758.  Quarto, 340 x 260 mm overall (13-3/8 x 10-1/4 in.), the pages 332 x 247 mm.  Six stipple-engraved plates (including frontispiece) by Colibert, Cazenave, and Clément after Monsiau, color-printed and before titles.  Collates [1 l.], 1 l. (front. plate verso), [A]4 - V4 , X1 = pp. [1 (title)]–161, [1 p.], [1 l.], plus 5 further inserted plates.  Contemporary full tan calf, covers mottled and paneled in gilt, spine gilt tooled in compartments, gilt tooled and lettered red morocco title piece, cover edges and dentelles gilt tooled, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers, silk marker ribbon.  Very good, scuffing and wear on spines, edges and covers, minimal foxing and offsetting, an excellent copy.

FLORIAN, Jean-Pierre Claris de

Galatée, Roman Pastoral. imité de Cervantes par M. de Florian, de l’Académie Françoise, &c.

Édition ornée de Figures en couleur, d’après les Dessins de M. Monsiau.

Paris: chez Defer de Maisonneuve, 1793.

First edition with color-printed plates of Florian’s 1783 pastoral romance.  Quarto, 344 x 265 mm (13-1/2 x 10-3/8 in.) overall, the pages 335 x 250 mm.  Four stipple-engraved plates by Colibert and Cazenave after Monsiau, color-printed and before titles.  Collates [1 l.], [A]4 - P4 , Q3 = pp. [1 (title)]–125, [1 p.], [1 l.] plus 4 inserted plates; includes "Vie de Cervantes" (pp. [5]-15) and "Des Ouvrages de Cervantes" (pp. [17]-25). Contemporary full tan calf, covers mottled and paneled in gilt, spine gilt tooled in compartments, gilt tooled and lettered red morocco title piece, cover edges and dentelles gilt tooled, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers, silk marker ribbon.  Very good, scuffing and wear on spines, edges and covers, minimal foxing and offsetting, an excellent copy.

The separate currents of stipple engraving and innovations in color printing during the last quarter of the eighteenth century converged in its last decade in color printed stipple engraving inked à la poupée in several plate books, notably the select few issued by the publisher André Defer de Maisonneuve.  Following his 1792 Milton illustrated after Schall, the publisher commissioned plates engraved by Nicolas Colibert, J.F. Cazenave and Alexandre Clément after Nicolas-André Monsiau, a Parisian Rococo painter fluent in book illustration, for the beautifully printed Gessner and Florian here offered.

References:

Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, pp. 151-152

Cohen-de Ricci (1912), cols. 400 and 436

Provenance:

De La Houssaye (engraved armorial bookplate in Galatée)

Rachel Lambert Mellon (1910-2014)

Detail