- Museum number
- 1936,0302.14.1
- Title
- Series: Les Artistes Anciens et Modernes
- Description
-
Titlepage to the first livraison; vignette with a stone panel carved in relief, with classical draped figures, and in front of it, symbolic objects including an artist's palette with brushes, a box (of paints?) and a book, etc., set in a landscape
Lithograph on buff chine collé
- Production date
- 1849-1862 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 148 millimetres (image)
-
Width: 203 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- This titlepage is in the first of three bound volumes of 'Les Artistes Anciens et Modernes' in the British Museum. The volumes (half bound in brown leather with marbled boards) include six livraisons (parts) with a total of 144 plates; each volume is quarter bound in brown leather and marbled boards, with the title and volume number tooled on the spine, and has a titlepage and list of plates with titles, brief descriptions, the names of the original artists and the lithographers. Two livraisons are included in each volume, as follows:
Volume 1, 1ère Année: titlepage, list of plates, first and second livraisons with Plates 1 to 24 and Plates 25 to 48 (Registration numbers 1936,0302.14.1 to 49).
The inside back cover of the volume is inscribed: "1880 June 11 [...] - Dec 19 . [...] 1931 Green Ticket / A Grateful Reader Hamilton Minchin Philomath / [...]".
Volume 2 , [illegible year]: list of plates, third and fourth livraisons with Plates 49 to 72 and Plates 73 to 96 (Registration numbers 1936,0302.15.1 to 49).
The inside front cover inscribed as the inside back cover of Volume 1.
Volume 3 , [no year]: list of plates, fifth and sixth livraisons with Plates 97 to 120 and Plates 121 to 144 (Registration numbers 1936,0302.16.1 to 49).
The inside front cover inscribed as the inside back cover of Volume 1 (punctuation differs).
Lugt (36a) describes the series as having nine livraisons with 216 plates. However, the British Museum collection includes Plate 240, and also the titlepage to the 10th livraison. Lugt's full listing conforms with the British Museum's bound volumes for the first six livraisons:
1st, Plates 1-24; 2nd, Plates 25-48; 3rd, Plates 49-72; 4th, Plates 73-96; 5th, Plates 97-120; 6th, Plates 121-144; 7th, Plates 145-168; 8th, Plates 169-192; 9th Plates 193-216. Lugt had not seen livraisons 8 and 9, but had seen a list of contents for the latter at the Bibliothèque Nationale.
N.B.
A livraison is described as a 'volume' in IFF and, it is assumed here, the term 'volume' lettered on the titlepages in the British Museum collection also refers to a 'livraison' as there is a titlepage to the tenth 'volume' (1880,0710.226).
Dating:
There are very few dates on the prints and none on the titlepages.
Lugt's dating of the publication as 1846-1853 is unreliable when checked against the Bibliographie de la France (see http://artfl-project.uchicago.edu/content/image-france).
The IFF occasionally provides some dates under entries for individual printmakers' work. Here the livraisons are referred to as 'volumes' and the volumes as 'tomes'. Since the dates provided in the IFF for the livraisons do not always correspond across the entries for different artists, they are insufficient to provide any certain dating.
Thus dating of the individual prints and of the published series is derived from the Bibliographie de la France, as follows.
a) a few entries which refer to the series
- an entry for 1ère livraison [ '17 novembre 1849, no. 541. Les Artistes anciens et modernes, par MM. {H. Baron}, {François}, {Gavarni}, {E. Leroux}, {Mouilleron}, {C. Nanteuil}, etc. Première livraison. Impr. lith. de {Bertauts}, à Paris.]
- an entry for an unspecified titlepage by Nanteuil ['1 septembre 1855, no. 1523. ('frontispice illustré par {Nanteuil}. Imp. lith. de {Bertauts}, à Paris']
- an entry for the titlepage of the 9e livraison, referred to as the '9e volume' [25 janvier 1862, no. 149. Artistes anciens et modernes (les), par {H. Baron}, {Français}, {Leroux}, {Mouilleron}, {C. Nanteuil}, etc. Frontispice du 9e volume. Paris, impr. lithog. {Bertauts}.].
N.B.
Another entry, for 1850, refers to a series with a similar title, includes some of the prints from this series, and the individual records for those prints refer to it: '2 novembre 1850, no. 557. Oeuvres des artistes anciens et modernes. 5e livraison.'
b) entries for many of the individual prints without reference to their publication in the series, and these dates are recorded here in the records for those prints.
For prints with no reference in the Bibliographie de la France, the following approximate dates will be used in 1849-1863 (circa) where 1849 is the date of the first livraison of the series, and 1863 is the date of the print which was published as Plate 240 in the 10th livraison of the series.
For another impressions, inscribed by Bertauts with a dedication to G. Desportes and with a different address for Bertauts, see 1880,0710.1.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1936
- Acquisition notes
- Transferred from the Department of Printed Books
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1936,0302.14.1