LA MOTTE Antoine Houdar de. Fables nouvelles dédiées au roi. Paris, Grégoire Dupuis, 1719; in-4, frontispiece, xiij and 358 pages, [3] ff, bound in midnight blue morocco, wide gilt lace on the boards, spine highly decorated with gilt motifs, inner lace and gilt edges.
First edition and first printing of a beautiful work which is considered as the first book with vignettes of the 18th
century. Frontispiece and 102 FIGURES BY CLAUDE GILLOT OF WHICH 58 ENGRAVED BY HIMSELF. The count of Caylus wrote: "The engraving and the etching, in which he will be forever famous by the intelligence and the pleasure of the composition with which he represented a great part of the fables of La Motte" (Life of Antoine Watteau). Later, Émile Dacier unreservedly admired "the freedom, the unexpectedness, the science of arrangement, the most beautiful finds of light, the finest color, the most accurate accent of these compositions by an artist who can claim the honor of having been the true initiator of the new taste in book illustration. (Trésor des Bibliothèques de France, II, 1-14).
As for La Motte, he was one of the first to contest the versification of poetry, which in his opinion impeded its true expression, and the rule
of the three units in the conventions of the theatre. A copy perhaps in large paper, luxuriously bound.
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