BONAPARTE, C.L. | Iconographie des pigeons, Paris 1857

BONAPARTE, CHARLES-LUCIEN

ICONOGRAPHIE DES PIGEONS NON FIGURES PAR MME. KNIP. PARIS: P. BERTRAND, 1857-[1858]

FIRST EDITION, folio (542 x 345mm.), half-title, 55 hand-coloured lithographed plates by and after Paul Louis Oudart, F. Willy, and E. Blanchard, printed by Lemercier, later green half morocco, some toning and light spotting to plates as normal, a few marginal tears and repairs

This work was intended to supplement Madame Knip's Les Pigeons, but stands independently on its own merits. Largely a posthumous treatise, it was edited by A. Moquin-Tandon, a distinguished ornithologist as well as a botanist and member of the Institut Went in Paris. Prince Bonaparte had planned the work to be issued in 30 livraisons of 150 plates, but died after the publication of the fourth livraison, leaving the manuscript and plates incomplete. Consequently, the plates are irregularly numbered. "The hand-colored bird portraits are extremely fine" (Wood).

LITERATURE:

Fine Bird Books, p.60; Nissen IVB 117; Wood, p.248; Zimmer 78

PROVENANCE:

City of Liverpool Public Libraries, bookplate; acquired from Antiquariaat Junk, The Netherlands, 1977

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