PBA Galleries

[23] leaves of text and 20 color engravings each with tissue guard. (4to) 32.5x24 cm (12¾x9½") period three-quarter blue morocco and marbled boards, spine gilt, raised bands, all edges gilt.

Plates engraved by Louis Marvy after J.M.W. Turner, J. Holland Thomas Creswick, George Cattermole, Peter Nasmyth, Thomas Gainsborough, David Roberts, and many others. Each plate is followed by a short critique by Thackeray. Thackeray was an old friend of Marvy, a French artist,  who took refuge in London after the chaos of 1848. Theodore Taylor’s 1864 biography of Thackeray mentions the history of the book: “A fine and skillful landscape painter himself, M. Marvy, while here, as a means of earning a living, made a series of engravings after the works of our English landscape painters... The publishers, however, would not undertake the work without a series of letter-press notices of each picture from Thackeray; and the latter accordingly added some criticisms which are interesting as developing his theory of this kind of art” (p.32). An interesting and quite scarce Thackeray item, very rarely found colored.