Les Bohemiens de Paris.

1840. DAUMIER, Honore. Les Bohémiens de Paris. With 28 hand-coloured lithographs, heightened with gum arabic, all by Daumier. Folio, 345 x 260 mm., bound in nineteenth-century green half morocco over mottled green marbled boards, spine elaborately gilt, original front printed wrapper [with letterpress title: Album Comique par Daumier] bound in, a.e.g. Paris: Au Bureau de Journal Amusant & du Petit Journal pour Rire, [1840-1842]. Complete set of Daumier's "Les Bohémiens de Paris" series, all beautifully hand-coloured at the time of publication and heightened in gum arabic. All the prints in the present volume are "sur blanc," i.e. printed individually on superior white wove paper, without the text of the Charivari journal on the verso. Because of the finer paper and printing methods, 'sur blanc' impressions are much more prized than those which appeared within the journal itself. Les Bohémiens de Paris figures prominently in Rumas' Daumier: 120 Great Lithographs, which especially reproduces and describes Plate 9 ("A Professional Sponger about to crash a fashionable Wedding Party"), Plate 15 ("A Sick-Nurse, the French equivalent of Dickens' Sairy Gamp"), and Plate 20 ("A Minor Actor in a small theater who plays Wealthy Monarchs though actually starving [here eating French Fries!]). These prints mainly belong to Delteil's 2nd state (of 3); exceptions are Plate 3 (3rd state of 4); Plate 15 (3rd state of 5); Plate 16 (3rd state of 4); and Plate 20 (3rd state of 4). The first state (avant la lettre) are invariably described as "fort rare" and are now unfindable. In excellent condition. Delteil 822-849. BN, Fonds Français (Après 1800) Tom. V, p. 478 (No. 157).