London, Thomas Boys, 1839.
Folio [532 x 355 mm], lithographed title, 24 (out of 25) chromolithographs, preserved in the editor’s decorated red half-morocco binding, buckram covers with red morocco borders all around, gilt stamped title on the center of the upper cover, a few foxing, body of the work detached from the binding, slightly rubbed binding. Contemporary binding.
Chromolithography was patented in 1837 and this work is one of the very first ones realized with this new technique.
Plates, colored by Charles Hullmandel who patented his own chromolithography process in 1840, are exceptionally beautiful.
“A very beautiful book. Apart from the brilliance, sensitivity and technical mastery of the drawing on stone there is the great, and often underestimated, technical and artistic transmission of such drawings, and in developing the cool, transparent, graduated tints, subtle in colouring, on which the book depends.” (Abbey, Travel 33)
“He produced alone the 28 lithographs of “Picturesque architecture in Paris, Gent, Antwerp, Rouen” (London, 1839). His views of Paris are sought-after.” (Dictionnaire des peintres, E. Benezit T., II, p. 259).
The plates present in this compilation are entitled: Fish Market, Antwerp ; Belfry, Gand ; Byloke, Ghent ; Tour de Remy, Dieppe ; L’Hôtel de Ville, Arras ; St. Laurent, Rouen ; Laon ; Rue de Rivage, Abbeville ; Rue de la Grosse Horloge, Rouen ; L’Abbaye St Amand, Rouen ; Hôtel de Cluny, Paris ; Hôtel Cluny, Paris ; Hôtel de Sens, Paris ; St Severin, Paris ; Porte Rouge, Notre Dame, Paris/Rue de Marmousets, Paris ; La Ste Chapelle, Paris ; Notre-Dame, Paris ; St Etienne du Mont, Paris ; St Etienne du Mont and the Pantheon, Paris ; Pavillon de Flore, Tuileries ; Hôtel de la Tremouille, Rue des Bourdonnois, Paris / Vieille Rue du Temple, Paris ; La Chapelle de l’Institut ; Notre-Dame, Paris, from the Quai St Bernard ; S. Porch of Chartres Cathedral ; St. André Chartres.
Thomas Shotter Boys, watercolorist and lithographer, was placed at George Cooke’s, engraver, in order to work as an engraver himself, but at the end of his apprenticeship, he visited Paris and was convinced by Bonington, for whom he had previously worked, to dedicate himself to painting. He exposed for the first time in Paris in 1827 and stayed there until 1837. He returned in England in order to lithograph David Roberts and Clarkson Stanfield’s works.
Boys’ work “Picturesque Architecture in Paris, Ghent, Antwerp, Rouen” published in 1839 was greatly admired. King Louis Philippe sent him a ring as a testimony of his merit. Boys was a member of the Institute of Painters in Water Colours.
A very beautiful work dedicated to the architecture of Paris, preserved in its contemporary binding.
