NODIER Charles, Justin TAYLOR, Alphonse de CAILLEUX.... Lot 39

NODIER Charles, Justin TAYLOR, Alphonse de CAILLEUX. Picturesque and romantic travels in old France. Old Normandy. Paris, P. Didot l'aîné, 1820-1825; 2 large volumes in-folio, period bindings dilapidated, without spine. These two volumes devoted to Upper Normandy inaugurate one of the most ambitious and accomplished editorial enterprises. Frontispiece and 268 lithographs, 238 of which are hors-texte and 30 in the form of large culs-de-lampe, themselves of great artistic and documentary interest: churches, abbeys, castles, ruins, a few large views of cities as the crow flies, several drawn on a tinted background, others on Chine appliqué. In many cases these illustrations preserve the memory of disappeared monuments. The artists' drawings translated by the recently developed process of lithography appear as luminous in touches and vapors as in deep or velvety blacks. One frontispiece and two plates are missing. Marginal stains on the first and last leaves of volume one. Provenance: Library of the Hotel de Jarnac