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Folio (17 4/8 x 10 5/8 inches). 20 leaves with 138 fine aquatint coastal profiles and views, all with original hand-colour, 24 engraved charts on 12 sheets, all with original hand-colour in full. Contemporary calf , the smooth spine decorated with fine gilt tools (rebacked, a little rubbed). Provenance: with the contemporary ownership inscription of Charles Hamlyn (?Rear-Admiral fl 1803-1855) on the front paste-down and the head of the title-page; with the bookplate of F. William Cock on the front paste-down; from the library of Christopher Henry Beaumont Pease, Lord Wardington (1924-2005), his sale Library of Important Atlases and Geographies, 10th October 2006, lot 469. First and only edition, and AN ATTRACTIVE COPY., of this charming coasting pilot, translated from Rene Bougard's "Le Petit de la Mer" of 1810. Serres, who most famously painted "The Thames at Limehouse", had a distinguished career as marine painter to George III, in which position he succeeded his father, and to the duke of Clarence. He was an official draughtsman to the Admiralty, and as such "Serres was frequently absent from home, for as much as six months in 1800 when he was actually on sea service. He made 'drawings in the form of elevations' of the coasts of France and Spain, a selection of which were published in 'The Little Sea Torch' (1801) [as here]. He taught drawing at the [short-lived] Chelsea Naval School and in 1805 published, under joint authorship with his father, 'Liber nauticus, and Instructor in the Art of Marine Drawing', a work intended to assist his students which contained plates after his own work and that of his father. In his absence, his wife committed numerous infidelities, and several frauds, which included forging her husband's name on bank drafts to the extent that Serres became a declared bankrupt. In 1802 a separation was mutually agreed, trusteeship for the daughters being invested, inter alia, in Olivia's current lover. In 1804 Serres abducted one of the daughters, for which he was charged by the trustees with breaching the trust and consigned to prison. Olivia evidently pursued her artist's career, since in 1806, two years before Serres's release from prison, she was appointed landscape painter to the prince of Wales (D. D. Aldridge). From the distinguished library of Lord Wardington whose collection of Atlases was unique: "a panoply of the history of cartography and of great mapmakers" (Andrew Phillips "An Appreciation", Sotheby's sale catalogue). Pastoureau (1984) Bougard N. pp. 79-80; Phillips 2852. Catalogued by Kate Hunter.
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