[BOOKPLATE.]
Design for an ex libris for Cortlandt Field Bishop, by Boissy[?].
c. 1910?
Oblong 8vo, ff. [6], comprising the original pencil drawing on heavy cartridge paper (embossed Bristol stamp), followed by five printings of the engraved plate (slightly reduced): two of the first state (one on wove paper, one on japon), two of the second state (likewise on wove and japon), and a final hand-coloured example on japon; in fine condition, bound in quarter red morocco with marbled paper sides.
The aviator, traveller, and book collector Cortlandt F. Bishop (1870–1935) bought America’s top auction house, American Art Association, in 1923, later merging it with Anderson Galleries – after his death it became Parke-Bernet, bought by Sotheby’s in 1964. Bishop was an avid collector, buying heavily at the Hoe sales in 1911 and 1912 and his library, sold in four parts in 1938, included the four Shakespeare folios, five Grolier bindings, the Roman de la Rose manuscript of Francis I, the Blickling Homilies, the Tickhill Psalter, Blake’s illuminated Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and Dickens’s reading copies of his own works; Rosenbach led the bidding.
Bishop had several recorded bookplates, including an Arcadian scene by Sidney L. Smith, and a morocco book-label with a mitre and bishop’s croziers, but we have not traced that he used this one – a putto bearing a book flying over a seascape. The second state adds stipple tone in the sea and sky.
