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Durand, Jean Nicolas Louis (1760--1834)
Vues pittoresques des principaux édifices de Paris.
A Paris (Place), chez Esnauts et Rapilly,, [c. 1792?].
Engr. t.-pl., 73 aquat. pl. (col.) ; (8º)

The engraved title for this work (absent in the Soane copy) seems to have been used to cover at least two different series of views. One is a suite of 110 circular aquatints by Le Campion, Guyot, Roger, Guillot, Belley and Mlle Guyot after F.M. Testard and Sergent [i.e. A.F. Sergent-Marceau] with the imprint line of 'les Campions freres' (q.v.); the other is the present suite of 73 circular aquatints by J.F. Janinet after J.N.L. Durand with the imprint line of 'Esnauts et Rapilly'. Plates 1--49 of this suite are numbered top right (pl. 21--24 in manuscript) and plates 50--73 are numbered underneath the caption within the circular frame. See Cohen-de Ricci, col. 514--5 (?).

Copy Notes Imperfect; wanting the title-plate and plates 17 and 39. The plates have been cropped within the plate-marks and pasted down in a large quarto scrapbook following the plates of the Testard/Sergent suite described above (q.v.); they are mostly renumbered in ink (frequently obscuring the original numbering) to form a single sequence with the Testard and Sergent plates. As with the other suite, some of the plates are accompanied by notes in a small contemporary (?) French hand written in ink on gilt-edged leaves torn from a small format notebook (10.8 cm.), keyed to the assigned plate numbers and/or captions and variously tipped down or inserted underneath the corresponding plates. There are also duplicates of plates 7 and 10, the latter in a state without the the imprint line. -- At a later stage these two suites were joined by a suite of 82 oblong octavo views of monuments in and around Paris which were pasted down on the versos of the leaves to face the similarly-numbered plates of the first suite, with a title-plate reading Collection des principaux monumens et vues de Paris with the imprint of Vallardi, Paris and Colnaghi, London probably dated c. 1820 (q.v.); this title-plate was pasted down on the first page of the scrapbook to form a title to the whole. Additionally a number of the scrapbook's leaves bear traces of earlier pastedowns having been removed, and there is at least one note now tipped onto the title-page and keyed to pl. 102 bains chinois which does not match any plate now in the scrapbook.

Binding C18th quarter sheep, mottled Kleisterpapier boards, gilt-tooled spine, red leather spine-label lettered in gilt 'Recueil D'Estampes'. 28.6 cm.

Reference Number 6629


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