UNIFORMS. - COLORED DRAWING COLLECTION, entitled... Lot 19

[UNIFORMS]. - COLORED DRAWING COLLECTION, entitled "Uniforms of the Army of the French Republic... Französische Armee-Uniformen". [Circa 1880]. In-8 square, placed in brown morocco spine folder with lined case of the same. AN EXTREMELY RARE HANDWRITTEN COPY OF AN UNOBTAINABLE SUITE PRODUCED BETWEEN 1800 AND 1804 IN POTSDAM. The titles of the present copy keep track of a place of edition "in Potsdam, chés Horvath libraire" and of a division in deliveries (Lieferungen) with prices in Prussian currency, one Reichsthaler and 12 Gröschen. The published original was considered by Glasser to be extremely rare: "This work [...] exists to our knowledge only in German libraries and in the library of His Highness Prince Victor Napoleon. The printer-librarian Karl Christian Horvath published several other collections of military costumes in the same vein in Potsdam: Preussische Armee-Uniformen unter der Regierung Friedrich Wilhelm II Königs von Preussen (1789), and, according to Johann Pohler, Französische Armee-Uniformen (1804, 60 plates, which may correspond to the present suite), and Kaiserliche Französiche Armee-Uniformen (1806, 55 plates) It includes 43 drawings in black ink and pen with watercolor and gold paint highlights. These drawings are divided into 5 double-sheeted quires of strong laid paper, in folders of the same paper bearing bilingual French and German handwritten titles, with, for the first three, a handwritten table on the back of the titles. The drawings of the first and second issues are not captioned but are numbered in ink, while the drawings of the following issues are captioned but were only later numbered in pencil. The generals, the corps of Guides, the line infantry, the light infantry, the foot artillery, the horse artillery, the Consuls' Guard, the Corps of Engineers, the regiments of Dragoons, Carabiniers, Chasseurs à cheval and Hussars are thus represented. The bibliographies of Georges Glasser (pp. 203-204) and René Colas (no. 2933), which follow him, indicate only 41 plates: one of the subjects they cite (Hussars, regiments no. 10 to 15) is represented here in two drawings (Hussars, regiments no. 10 to 12 and no. 13 to 15), and they do not mention the drawing representing here the Hussars of regiments no. 22 and 23. COPY COMMISSIONED BY ALBERT MILLOT, FOR HIS CELEBRATE LIBRARY ON MILITARY COSTUMES, the most important of his time on the subject (monogrammed stamps on the verso of the leaves; no. 94 of his auction sale, Paris, A. Geoffroy frères, 1904, which places the copy around 1880, and indicates that it was made on a copy then kept in Dresden).