Les Toqués Du Jour

Paris: Arnauld De Vresse, 1850. Exceedingly Scarce
Highly Amusing Hand-Colored Caricatures Showing "The Crazy's of the Day"

[CHAM, illustrator, pseud. of Charles Amédée de Noé]. Les Toqués Du Jour. Paris: Arnauld De Vresse, [n.d., ca. 1847].

First edition. Large folio (13 3/4 x 10 5/16 inches; 349 x 261 mm.). Hand-colored lithographed title and thirty-six comical scenes on eighteen fine hand-colored lithographed plates heightened with gum arabic. Each scene with printed caption below.

Publisher's brown ribbed cloth, bordered in blind, front cover lettered in gilt. Expertly rebacked to style at an early date. Inner hinges cracked but sound, corners very slightly rubbed. A near fine copy of this exceedingly scarce album.

A highly amusing collection of lithographs by Cham (1819-1879) satirizing the varieties of Les Toqués Du Jour
(The Crazy's of the Day).

Of Charles Amédée de Noé, "known as Cham (that is, Ham, the son of Noah)...it was said that he had ‘an idea a day' for Le charivari. A good proportion of his thousands of lithographs were gathered into albums. His contributions to the Album du siège (173), in which Daumier was his collaborator, are typical of his work" (Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, pp. 155-156).

Exceedingly scarce. No copies found in WorldCat or KVK, and apparently no copies have appeared at auction, certainly during the past thirty-five years.