Lot n° 584
Estimation :
500 - 600
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 812EUR
MONTORGUEIL (Georges) - WILLETTE (Adolphe). - Lot 584
MONTORGUEIL (Georges) - WILLETTE (Adolphe).
Paris dancing.
Paris : Théophile Belin, 1898. - Large in-8, 285 x 194 : frontispiece, (2 ff.), VII, 220 pp, (2 ff.), 12 plates, printed embossed cover. Half salmon morocco with corners, gilt fillets, spine decorated with gilt dancers in a diamond-shaped frame of dark green and red morocco scrolls, gilt head, untrimmed, cover and spine preserved (V. Champs).
Edition printed at 200 copies on wove paper watermarked with the title of the book and the name of the illustrator. It is decorated with 40 compositions by Adolphe Willette engraved in intaglio by Vigna-Vigneron, including a coloured vignette on the title, 13 bistre headbands and 13 culs-de-lampe as well as a frontispiece and 12 coloured off-texts.
This panorama of the different types of dance practiced in Paris at the end of the 19th century is divided into 12 chapters: On dansera. - The official ball. - Weddings and feasts. - The balls of July 14th. - Musette balls. - Masked balls. - Artists' balls. - The Moulin de la Galette. - The Bullier Ball. - The Naturalist Quadrille. - The Garden of Paris. - The Dance at the Opera.
"These chapters, without aiming at erudition or history, are at least drawn from the sources; they are "spoken" by those concerned, documented by witnesses. The Prefect of Police, the strict guardian of morals, gave his opinion, as did Mlle Grille-d'Égout, who introduced the new cancan. The opinion of the "Désossé" was collected like that of the ballet master. The stars of the dance were consulted like the patrons of musettes. Observation has endeavoured to guess the impression made at the Elysée ball by the head of state, who makes the dancers dance, and the municipal official, at the public ball, who supervises the dance - characters who are by function silent and discreet. From the mosaic of these impressions, the method to be followed for the sequence of these pages is deduced: it is based on four essential divisions which could be called: the vital causes of the dance and its chances of eternity. Dance is both in formal society and in the world a politeness. It is a pleasure in the street, at the musette, at weddings, at carnivals, among artists and students, and at parties where charity takes the road. It is a means to the public ball, sometimes a state. In art, it is a goal" (pp. VI-VII).
The representation of the different balls and dances has been perfectly reproduced by Adolphe Willette who offers in his compositions tasty and sometimes humorous details, reproduced according to the observations he made in the different places described. The culs-de-lampe and headbands are purely humorous, featuring cherubs in sometimes comical situations.
Copy number 83, including the frontispiece in 3 states (first printing before all letters, in black before the letter and in colours), the hors-texts in two states (in black before the letter and in colours) and a decomposition of the colours in 4 plates of the frontispiece. It also includes the in-8 leaf of the Avis des Graveurs bound at the end.
A very nice copy bound by Victor Champs.
Small stains on the boards, not serious.
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