Chalon John James (3 results)

42 Great Marlborough Street, 17 April 1830. John James Chalon (17781854), landscape and genre painter.

Folio. (19 3/8 x 13 1/2 inches). Lithographed title page and 24 unnumbered lithographic plates designed and drawn by J.J. Chalon, printed by Hullmandel, all beautifully and fully coloured by a contemporary hand on Whatman paper watermarked 1821-22. Original brown paper boards Provenance: Hand-coloured bookplate of Richard Stamper Philpott, Prebendary of Wells, River House, Hammersmith A very fine first edition of Chalon's celebrated panorama of Parisian street life. A large paper copy entirely uncut in original boards. A cornerstone plate book of Parisian street life and an important document of early English lithography. The series presents animated scenes of cafés, markets, promenades, trades, and various occupations: "La Marchande de Tisanne," "Les Dames de la Halle," "Une Matinée aux Tuileries," "Le Restaurant," "Le Cimetière du Père-la-Chaise," "La Marchande de Modes," and others, representing authentic studies with "hardly a touch of caricature" (Ray). Issued in 1822, the album captures Paris during the Bourbon Restoration under Louis XVIII. The city was expanding north and west, theatres and restaurants flourished along the Grands Boulevards, Père-Lachaise cemetery had become a fashionable place of memorial and promenade, and new forms of urban sociability, such as arcades, cafés, and markets, structured daily life. Population growth was steady, gas lighting spread, and cross-Channel travel resumed after the wars, drawing British visitors to observe precisely the scenes Chalon records here. The resulting portfolio reads as a pictorial ethnography of the metropolis at a moment of change, attentive to costume, gesture and setting. Abbey, Travel, 108; Colas 588; Hiler, p. 156; Lipperheide Fd15; Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, 124, Rahir 264; Bobins II 514.

8vo. 1 page on bifolium. With autograph address verso. To the enamel painter Henry Bone (1755-1834) in London about a Dutch admirer eager to see his works: "Mr. Vinkeles a Dutch artist being very desirous of se[e]ing your works, you will by allowing a sight of them, confer a favour on [.] yours very truly [.]".