FONTALLARD, HENRI-GERARD.

Histoire d'une Epingle par elle-même, en seize tableaux. [Story of a needle told by herself in sixteen pictures]

Paris. (P. Osterwald aîné; Rittner.), ( 1827). Stock ID #177839

16 lithographs on laid, watermarked paper 29.9 x 23.5 cm (sheets), loose (as issued) in the original green title wrappers with engraved vignette, wrappers intact but worn and chipped, strengthened with tape on the verso; the lithographs toned, four with scattered foxing but on the whole in very good condition.

Very rare complete series of lithographs in their uncoloured first state by artist and satirist Henri Gerard-Fontallard (1798- circa 1843), noted for his caricatures lampooning fashion and society.

The series was published in 1827, just as Russia, Britain and France had sent naval squadrons to Greece to rapidly advance the long Greek struggle against the Ottomans for independence. Fontallard has (unusually) included two lithographs of philhellenic significance.

Plate 9 shows a fashionably dressed woman donating money to help the Greek cause. It satirises a very popular lithograph published in 1826 by Mlle. Formentin "Quete pour les Grecs" (Collection for the Greeks), a cause established by the French Comité Grec and largely administered by wives or relatives of Committee members. In Fontallard's satire, he shows the elegantly outfitted Parisian woman presenting money to a cashier oblivious to a wounded Greek soldier in traditional dress with his child and their dog at her feet.

Plate 10 shows a wounded Greek soldier being attended in order to return to the battle shown raging to his left. A woman prone protects her child at the soldier's feet, and to his right three Greek women bare to the waist (perhaps in a parody of Delacroix's Liberty) cleave in an attitude of desperation to a Greek cross.

When referring to this item please quote stockid 177839.

Price: $2,800.00 AU

other currencies