Author : Doré, Gustave Year of publication: 2013 Format: Hardback Signature: No First edition :No Condition: New Category: History Cost of book: £854 Price negotiable: No
Specifics:
4to. 217 p. Weight 1,74kg. 1st Language: French, 2nd Language: Russian. Reprint. This book is a curiosity which represents a satirical history of Russia done by French graphic artist Gustave Dore in 1854 during the Crimean war when England and France where engaged in conflict with Russia. Essentially, it's an early comic book with over 500 illustrations. The drawings and accompanying original text in French on the right page (with Russian translation on the left page) are intriguing and amusing.The illustrations range from sketches to fully detailed full page drawings. The storytelling is done through a few sentences per image to songs and full paragraphs. GUSTAVE DORÉ is the most popular and successful French book illustrator of the mid 19th century. Doré became very widely known for his illustrations to such books as Dante's Inferno (1861), Don Quixote (1862), and the Bible (1866), and he helped to give European currency to the illustrated book of large . He was so prolific that at one time he employed more than forty blockcutters. His work is characterized by a rather naïve but highly spirited love of the grotesque and represents a commercialization of the Romantic taste for the bizarre. Drawings of London done in 1869-71 were more sober studies of the poorer quarters of the city and captured the attention of van Gogh. In the 1870s he also took up painting (doing some large and ambitions religious works) and sculpture (the monument to the dramatist and novelist Alexandre Dumas in the Place Malesherbes in Paris, erected in 1883, is his work). EDITION AND BINDING SPECIFICATIONS: Reprinted. 4vo. Limited edition of 100 signed and numbered copies (this is #38/100). The book is individually hand-sewn and bound in hand-crafted and tooled full saddle-brown aged shagreen. Custom-made cream paper “Conqueror” by Arjowiggins. The covers elaborately hand-tooled in gilt and black color embossing. The spine divided into five panels, with gilt and black color embossing compartments, lettered in the second and in the third on a black label and gilt, the others with floral and ornamental tools with raised bands tooled in gilt. The hand-marbled paper doublures and endleaves. Doublures ornately hand-tooled in gilt. Top edge gilt and hand engraving. The fore edge and bottom edge are sculpted by hand. Silk ribbon. Contained within a custom-made matching wood-pattern paper with saddle-brown aged shagreen edging slipcase. Reprinted edition from "Histoire pittoresque: dramatique et caricaturale de la Sainte Russie, d'après les chroniqueurs et historiens Nestor, Nikan, Sylvestre, Karamsin, Ségur, etc., commentée et illustrée de 500 magnifiques gravures par Gustave Doré", Paris, J. Bry Ainé. 1854.(The colors shade captured on photos may slightly differ from the original).
