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lote/wall hill s hudson river portfolio the most beautiful color plate Kyvtu5B 629673608 / En venta

lote/wall hill s hudson river portfolio the most beautiful color plate Kyvtu5B 629673608

En ventaHistorial de precios

lote/wall hill s hudson river portfolio the most beautiful color plate Kyvtu5B 629673608

En ventaHistorial de precios

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Wall & Hill's Hudson River Portfolio, The Most Beautiful Color Plate

WALL, William G. (1792-1864).; engr. John HILL (1770-1850). The Hudson River Portfolio. New York: Henry G. Megarey, 1821 [1825]. First edition. THE BOBINS COPY of "THE MOST BEAUTIFUL COLOR PLATE BOOK PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY" Oblong broadsheet folio (19” x 26”, 482mm x 659mm). With 20 hand-colored aquatint-engraved plates by John Hill after William Wall (though see below), numbered 1-8, 10 210 12 15 13-14 215 16-20. Bound in modern half red-straight-grained morocco antique over (contemporary) marbled boards with the title (“VIEWS/ IN/ AMERICA”) gilt to a red straight-grained morocco label on the front board. On the spine, seven gilt fillets. Lacking the letterpress text. Small repaired splits and tears throughout. Repaired tear (?) to the lower edge of no. 3 (View Near Jessups Landing). “View Near Fort Miller” (No. 10) printed in blue. “Troy from Mount Ida” (No. 12; see below) text weakly impressed, with marginal repair at the lower edge. Marginal repair to No. 15, with some skinning recto, not affecting the image. Fore-edge of No. 16 restored to about ¼”. Margins of No. 20 rebuilt, with the imprint filled in manuscript. A few marks of tanning and the odd spot of foxing, but altogether a rich set with good color. Drawing on the aesthetic category of the Picturesque — a contrast to the Sublime that so much characterized image-making of the American West — The Hudson River Port Folio depicts the spine of New York almost from its headwaters at Luzerne down through New York Harbor some 180 miles south. It is the vision of William Guy Wall (1792–1864), the grandfather of the Hudson River School (Thomas Cole’s trip up the Hudson happened in the year the present work was completed). Born in Ireland — cf. Finola O’Kane’s 2013 Ireland and the Picturesque (Yale UP), which argues for the Irish origin of the British Picturesque — Wall showed the early industrial Hudson Valley as a harmonious confluence of natural beauty and human endeavor. John Hill and his son John William Hill commercialized Wall’s paintings after an aborted attempt by John Rubens Smith. This accounts in part for the odd numeration; nos. 2, 3, 5 and 11 (here numbered 12) were reworked compositions of Smith’s. As with so many ambitious illustrated publications, the work was issued in parts of 4 plates; the initial goal had been 24 plates in 6 numbers but the final number never made it to press. No title-page was ever issued, and numeration is inconsistent (e.g., in the Metropolitan Museum set “Troy from Mount Ida” is numbered 11). I have seen no mention of a blue run for “View Near Fort Miller;” is it perhaps a proof plate? Examples of the portfolio with all plates in the original state — the whole portfolio was reissued in 1828 by the Carvills, with their names added — are rare indeed (it receives Howes’s second-highest scarcity rating of “d”). The Reese copy sold in 2022 ($201,600) and the present copy at the Bobins sale in 2023; before those Christie’s confirms that no complete set of the first-edition plates had come to auction since 1948. Norman Bobins began his vast collection of color-plate books in the early 1980’s — many having been purchased at Arader — and began to disburse them in a series of landmark sales at Christie’s. The present item was lot 80 in part 1 (16 June 2023). Deák 320; Howes W 47; Koke, Checklist 73-94; Reese, Color Plate Books 6.

Estimación:€120,148.14

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