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Art & Architecture

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Art & Architecture encompasses a broad sweep of material, from early works concerning architecture and architectural history, and books and manuscripts on the fine arts and aesthetics, antiquities and archaeology, to pattern and design books, and private press books and fine bindings. The department also handles original artwork, artistic archives, posters, and propaganda material.

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  1. ROUQUET, Jean-André. 

    The present State of the Arts in England.  By M. Rouquet, member of the Royal Academy of Painting and...

    London, for J. Nourse, 1755. 

    First edition in English, published in the same year as the French original, from the library of the great Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723–1790). 

    £19500

  2. DASSIER, Jean and Jacques-Antoine. 

    ‘An Explanation of Dassier’s Medals being a Representation of a Series of Events taken...

    London, c. 1795–1800. 

    An exceptionally fine illustrated manuscript, with drawings after the series of sixty medals of Roman history from Romulus to the Age of Augustus produced by Jean Dassier and his son in 1740-1743.  The drawings are executed with considerable finesse, adding detailed elements not clearly visible...

    £6500

  3. HELMAN, Isidore-Stanislas-Henri.

    Faits mémorables des empereurs de la Chine, tirés des annales Chinoises, dédiés à Madame,...

    Paris, chez l’auteur … et chez M. Ponce, [1788].

    Two handsome engraved works by the French engraver and printseller Helman (1743–1806/9), here on uncut sheets, the first depicting scenes from Chinese history, the second episodes in the life of Confucius (Kong Fuzi).

    £6000

  4. MARLIANI, Bartolomeo. 

    Urbis Romae topographia. 

    Rome, Valerio & Luigi Dorico, September 1544. 

    First illustrated edition (third overall), showing the archaeology and antiquities of Rome as known in the sixteenth century.  First published in octavo by Antonio Blado in 1534 and reprinted at Lyons by Sébastien Gryphe later the same year, Marliani’s topography of Rome remained the foremost...

    £5500

  5. [WALLPAPER.]

    A substantial album of printed wallpaper samples.

    France, 1923–24.

    A delightful sample album of French wallpapers printed by a variety of stencil, block and lithographic methods, on papers plain, coloured, textured, and silked.

    £4750

  6. ERNST, Max.

    Une semaine de bonté ou les sept éléments capitaux. Roman. Premier [– Dernier] cahier …

    Paris, Éditions Jeanne Bucher, 1934.

    First edition, no. 706 of 800 copies on papier Navarre from a total edition of 816, of the most famous of Max Ernst’s Surrealist ‘collage novels’, composed entirely of recomposed images drawn from illustrations to nineteenth-century novels, encyclopaedias, scientific journals, and engravings...

    £4500

  7. NORMAND, Alfred Nicolas.

    L’architecture des nations étrangères. Etude sur les principales constructions du parc à l’Exposition...

    Paris, A. Morel, 1870.

    First edition. This is a presentation copy, inscribed on the half-title to the author’s friend Charles Garnier, architect of the Paris opera house that bears his name: ‘A son ami Ch. Garnier. Souvenir affectueux A. Normand’. The two men had known each other since they were both ‘pensionnaires’...

    £4000

  8. VIAS, Balthasar de.

    In clarissimum virum Nicolaum Claudium Fabricium de Peiresc ... Epicedion.

    Marseille, Claude Garcin, 1642.

    Uncommon first edition of Balthasar de Vias’s elegant neo-Latin elegy commemorating the life of his friend the scholar, antiquary, and collector Nicolas Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637) of Aix-en-Provence, the most learned man of his time; our copy contains the extremely rare ‘Encomiasticon’...

    £3250

  9. [VILLAMENA, Francesco.]

    A fan leaf drawing of a street fight in Rome.

    [Italy, late eighteenth century.]

    A fine fan leaf drawing, Italian school, late eighteenth century, copied from a print by Francesco Villamena of c. 1601. It depicts a street fight between Spanish and French factions in Rome with a view of the villa Mattei in the background. The original copper engraving by Villamena was dedicated...

    £2200

  10. BEARDSLEY, Aubrey, art editor; Henry HARLAND, literary editor. 

    The Yellow Book.  An Illustrated Quarterly.  Volume...

    London [– & New York], Elkin Mathews & John Lane [– John Lane, The Bodley Head], and Boston, Copeland & Day, April 1894 [− April 1897]. 

    An excellent set of the first edition of The Yellow Book, the decade-defining illustrated quarterly that captured the spirit of decadence and aestheticism and gave its name to ‘the yellow nineties’. 

    £2000

  11. PETRINI, Giovanni.

    Sixteen copper engravings depicting scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary.

    [Rome, late eighteenth century.]

    An attractive volume containing sixteen engravings by Giovanni Petrini of scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, including renderings of famous paintings by the likes of Correggio, Poussin, Titian, Raphael, and Rubens.

    £1750

  12. DONI, Antonio Francesco.

    Disegno … partito in piu ragionamenti, ne quali si tratta della scoltura e pittura; de colori, de getti,...

    Venice, Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1549.

    First edition of an important art-theoretical text by the polyglot scholar Anton Francesco Doni (1513–1574) on the Renaissance concept of disegno in contemporary sculpture and painting, a notable source text for scholars of Michelangelo and his lifelong rival, Baccio Bandinelli.

    £1250

  13. [REYNOLDS, Joshua, Sir].

    A Discourse, delivered at the Opening of the Royal Academy, January 2, 1769 [also: October 16,...

    London: Printed in the Year 1769.

    First editions of seven discourses addressed by Reynolds to the newly founded Royal Academy, of which he was the first President.

    £950

  14. CHEESMAN, Thomas. 

    No. I. Six Heads Drawn and Engraved, by T. Cheesman.

    [London,] T. Cheesman, No. 40 Oxford Street; and to be had of J.F. Tomkins, New Bond Street, Published February 10, 1797.

    First and only edition, extremely rare, of this complete series of six heads of young women wearing head scarves by ‘one of Bartolozzi’s most outstanding pupils’.

    £850

  15. CARTARI, Vincenzo. 

    Le imagini con la spositione de i dei de gli antichi. 

    Venice, per Francesco Marcolini, 1556. 

    First edition of Cartari’s influential and successful treatise on the mythology of the ancients. Cartari concentrated on the iconography of the gods, explaining their guises and detailing their several attributes. His book was expressively written to aid artists, painters, and sculptors to...

    £800

  16. DODGSON, Campbell (editor).

    Woodcuts of the XV Century in the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum.

    London, British Museum, 1934 [– 1935].

    First edition, scarce, of Dodgson’s authoritative and thoroughly illustrated catalogue of fifteenth-century woodcuts in the British Museum. Published after two decades as Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, the monumental Woodcuts of the XV Century is considerably scarcer...

    £750

  17. CELLINI, Benvenuto. 

    Vita di Benvenuto Cellini orefice e scultore fiorentino da lui medesimo scritta, nella quale molte curiose...

    ‘Cologne’ [i.e. Florence], ‘Pietro Martello’ [i.e. Bartolini], [1792]. 

    The counterfeit edition of Benvenuto Cellini’s seminal autobiography, extra-illustrated with two large engravings illustrating his ‘Perseus and Medusa’ and the ‘Hercules and Cacus’ of his rival sculptor Bandinelli. 

    £675

  18. FARINGTON, Susan Maria (illustrator). 

    The 104th Psalm.  Illustrated by Susan Maria Ffarington.  Worden. 

    London,  Vincent Brooks Day & Son, [c. 1867]. 

    The Faringtons or Ffaringtons were an ancient family of Worden Hall, Leyland, Lancashire, with a substantial family archive.  Susan Maria (1808–1894) edited The Farington Papers for the Chetham Society in 1856, and made other contributions to local history, but this unusual panorama seems to have...

    £650

  19. FIORILLO, Johann Dominicus.

    Geschichte der zeichnenden Künste, von ihrer Wiederauflebung bis auf die neusten Zeiten ...

    Göttingen, bei Johann Georg Rosenbusch, 1798 [and Johann Friederich Rower], 1801-1805.

    First edition. Fiorillo began as a painter, studying in Rome and Bologna, but turned to art history and became a professor at the University of Gottingen and colleague of Lichtenberg, in 1781. His erudite survey of the art of painting throughout Europe was among the first to make use of medieval documentary...

    £600

  20. TENNYSON, Alfred, and Eleanor FORTESCUE-BRICKDALE, illustrator.

    The Idylls of the King … Illustrated in Colour...

    London, Hodder & Stoughton, [1911].

    Deluxe edition of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King illustrated by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1872–1945), no. 124 of 250 copies signed by the artist.

    £600