Kleist, Ludwig von, & Georg Emanuel Opiz | A scarce and stunning suite of military color plates, with an original watercolor drawing

Kleist, Ludwig von, & Georg Emanuel Opiz 

[Tableaux des armées de l’Europe. Dresden: Ludwig von Kleist, ca.1840–1845 (two plates dated 1840, 1841, paper watermarked 1828–1845)]

Broadsheets (644 x 770 mm). Suite of 17 very finely handcolored engraved plates (centered images vary slightly in size from a maximum of about 510 x 710 mm) of the armies of Europe, mostly after Opiz (also spelled Opitz), some after Hilscher and Bommer, by Hilscher, Bommer, Opiz, and Wunerlich, the images ruled in black and with light- or dark-gray wash borders, captions in German and French with the national arms of the army depicted, most with engraved dedications in French signed as Louis de Kleist, bound with an original graphite, watercolor, and gouache drawing on paper (533 x 708 mm), evidently by Opiz, by Georg Opiz, calligraphically captioned “Die Königlich Sächsische Armee nach der Organisation von 1812” (a preparatory drawing for the for the first Saxon Army plate) and initialed by Kleist (“LvK.”), tipped to a larger sheet with gray wash borders uniform with the engravings; short tear at lower margin of sixth plate, just into border rule. Nineteenth-century maroon morocco over blue cloth, spined gilt-lettered with a crowned cipher, plain endpapers; extremities worn, some fading.

A strikingly beautiful suite of seventeen engraved plates and one original watercolor drawing depicting the uniforms of the armies of Europe. The watercolor depicts the Saxon Army, which was based in Dresden, where the plates were published, and it incorporates a view of the city in the background.

The engravings comprise tableaux of the Imperial Russian Army (two plates), the French Army (two plates, Cavalry and Infantry), the British Army (designated plate 1), the Royal Danish Army, the Swedish Army, the Austrian Army (two plates), the Prussian Army (two plates, Cavalry and Infantry), the Saxon Army (two plates), the Royal Army of Hanover, the Royal Army of Bavaria, the Royal Army of Würtemberg, and the armies of the Grand Duke of Hesse. The engravings are largely the work of Georg Emanuel Opiz (1775–1841), was a  Bohemian German painter and graphic artist. He studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and later taught at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig.

Very rare: we have not been able to trace another set of this suite in the auction records, and it is not recorded in Colas or Lipperheide. The only institutional copies that we are aware of are in the Bibliothèque nationale, Paris (with 23 plates), and the Kungliga biblioteket, Stockholm (9 plates). 

PROVENANCE:

Christie's London, 26 October 1988, lot 56 (“The Property of a Member of a European Royal Family”) — A private American collection, since the 1988 auction