A Modern French Master Illustrator

A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy.

London & New York: George Routledge and Sons, Broadway, Ludgate Hill, 1885.

Price: $750.00


About the item

Leloir, Maurice. Number 437 of 550 copies printed by H. Launtte, Librairie Artistique, Paris for George Routledge. With 12 full-page photogravure plates ("by the Goupil process") and numerous sketches throughout the text by Maurice Leloir. 1 vols. 4to (12 1/2 x ( inches). A Modern French Master Illustrator. Bound in full blue contemporary morocco, gilt lettered spine, gilt dentelles, t.e.g., original chromolithographed wrappers bound in. About fine. Ray 292 (French ed.).

Item #54074

Fine, attractive copy of this beautifully illustrated book, masterfully incorporating his drawings with the text, in style of Johannot. Leloir (1853-1940) was one of the true professionals in the history of French illustration. Books with his designs appeared over five decades. Working by preference with stories laid in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he was at pains to make his costumes as accurate as possible. It was his celebrity in this field, indeed, which led Douglas Fairbanks to bring him to Hollywood as artistic director of The Iron Mask (1929). His illustrations are abundant, precise, and objective..." -Ray, French Illustrated Books.

As for A Sentimental Journey, one of his masterpieces, Ray observes that "every episode in Sterne's short text finds its appropriate visual commentary..."