SAUVAN, Jean-Baptiste Balthazar. Picturesque Tour of the Seine from Paris to the Sea : with Particulars Historical and Descriptive. Illustrated with Twenty-Four Highly Finished and Coloured Engravings, from Drawings by A. Pugin and J. Gendall ; and Accompanied by a Map.

First issue of one of the finest albums about Paris and the Seine: it is illustrated with 24 engravings out of pagination printed in color and enhanced in watercolor after Gendall and Pugin’s compositions.
Abbey, Travel 90; Tooley, English books with coloured Plates, London 1954, n°445; Bobins, Exotic and the Beautiful II: 548.

Engraved by Sutherland and Havell, the illustration also comprises a vignette on the title depicting the Castle of Rosny (property of the duchess de Berry), a large tail-piece in color and a colored map. Views of Le Havre, Rouen, Elbeuf, Honfleur, Vernon, Mantes, Saint-Germain, Saint-Cloud, Paris, etc. The album is dedicated to King Louis XVIII.
The proofs are from a very beautiful issue on Whatman paper which watermark is dated 1818.

Sauvan’s work is rightfully considered as the finest illustrated book about the valley of the Seine published under the restoration.

The engravings in color form true paintings presenting the architecture, the landscapes and the inhabitants of this area before the industrial revolution.

“The River Seine is well known to form a distinguished feature in the Tour of France, as it winds through and adorns the important province of Normandy, and is the great commercial Channel of the Metropolis of that Kingdom. This River reflects, in its earlier stream, the most striking views of metropolitan grandeur; and, as it proceeds, Nature has been most lavish in beautiful pictures on its banks, and presents, in its course, a succession of objects, whose landscape enrichments are connected with antiquarian circumstances peculiarly interesting to the English Traveller” (prospectus on verso of the wrappers).

A superb copy without foxing, one of very few bound in a full decorated morocco binding.