La Fontaine, Jean de

Contes et nouvelles en vers.  Amsterdam [i.e., Paris: Barboul], 1762



2 volumes, 8vo (7 x 4  3/4  in.; 177 x 121 mm).  Frontispiece portraits by Ficquet of La Fontaine after Regnault and of Eisen after Vispré,  etched title-page vignettes, 2 headpieces and 51 tailpieces by Choffard, 80 engraved plates after Eisen by Aliamet, Baquoy, Choffard, Delafosse, Flipart, De Longueil, Le Mire, Lempereur, Le Vau, Ouvrier, and others; occasional marginal browning and spotting.  Full red morocco by Chambolle, spines elaborately gilt in six compartments, covers gilt-ruled, all eges gilt, foredges also marbled, gilt dentelles, marbled endleaves; joints starting, some rubbing to spines and extremities.

Mortimer L. Schiff (red morocco gilt bookplate in each volume).  Three other copies of this edition appeared in the Schiff sales, Sotheby's London, March–December 1938, lots 262, 928, and 1938.

Cohen-de Ricci 558–570; Catalog Fürstenberg 50; Holloway French Rococo Book Illustration, pp. 21–32; Ray French 28

The best known masterpiece of Rococo book illustration" (Holloway).  The first Fermiers-Généraux edition, limited to possible 800 copies.  The Fermiers Généraux, an association of tax gatherers, sought to consolidated their prestige and presence as the first financial company in the French realm with this lavishly illustrated book, of which all but five stories were composed by La Fontaine. Charles Eisen's designs, among his livliest and most spontaneous, capture the most salient moment of these piquant tales without vulgarity.  Choffard's equally witty vignettes and tailpieces draw directly from the stories for inspiration, which the brothers Goncourt later extolled as the "monument and triumph of the vignette, which dominates and crowns all the illustrations of the age."  A garlanded self-portrait hangs just below a caged bird in his vignette for the final tale, "Le Rossignol."