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Album Des Rieurs.
Paris: H. Gache, Rue de la Victoire, 66, [1850?]. Oblong 8vo, original red cloth, blind-stamped ornaments and gilt-rule borders to covers, re-backed, original spine laid down. Illustrated title, 24 tinted lithographs. A rare collection of comic illustrations, a fair number of which involve the antics of children and animals. A couple’s “repas Champêtre” is interrupted by a horse and rider flying over the stone wall behind them; a regiment of toddling girls in their walkers stands arrayed before the Napoleonic figure of a boy who announces “Le patrie en danger”; an artist paints a young woman’s portrait, her mother remarking “N’est ce pas Mr. l’Artisse que ma Clarisse passerait bien pour une vierge?” The quality of the drawing and lithography is excellent. Artist Leo Scherer (1827-1876) is an obscure figure. He is listed in Benezit as a painter born in Ettelreid, Germany, the brother of artists Sebastien, Alois, and Joseph Scherer. OCLC records two other works by him, Alphabet Drolatique (1850) and Le Vrai Portrait du Juif-Errant, an undated broadside recorded in a single copy, in the Wandering Jew Collection at Brown University. The evidence of these two works as well as the present one suggest that Scherer spent at least part of his career in France. No works by him in German come up in OCLC. Date of publication taken from caption reading “Paris le 6 Aout 1850” on plate 17, which shows the ludicrous circumstances on a flooded Parisian street. Only two copies in OCLC, one at the New York Public Library and the other at Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. CONDITION: Very good, minor soiling.
Item #2589
Price: $1,500.00