Hokusai painting (unsigned)Biblio.com
Louis GONSE - (HOKUSAI) - (UTAMARO)Biblio.com
L'art japonais Japanese Art
188391742Paris: A. Quantin 1883. Fine. The Bible of Japonism in its original silk binding A. Quantin Paris 1883 28.8 x 36.6 cm 2 volumes en reliures de l'éditeur First edition one of 1400 numbered copies only issue. Outstanding publishers cream silk Bradel binding signed by Engel at the foot of the spine flat spine decorated with Japanese characters; upper boards in excellent condition elaborately decorated with a reproduction of Shinmans starlings against a setting sun from the Henri Cernuschi collection also illustrated pl. 26 vol. 1; corners slightly rubbed; both volumes complete with their illustrated dust jackets showing tears and some losses. Illustrated with 64 tissue-guarded plates most in colour 13 etchings 21 heliogravures 2 typographic engravings in black and gold 10 chromolithographs and 18 watercolours the majority signed by Gillot and Guérard. Numerous illustrations in black throughout. An exceptional copy of the first history of Japanese art written outside of Asia housed in its magnificent publishers silk binding signed by Jean Engel in pristine condition throughout: with its one thousand and twenty-four illustrations in black and in colour is not a conventional ornamental repertoire. It marks a clear break with traditional perception and reception of Japanese art that had prevailed in France and the West since the 1860s François Gonse Une histoire de lart japonais en 1883. Lil de Louis Gonse Histoire de lart N°40-41 1998. The author Louis Gonse was an art historian exhibition curator and director of the Gazette des beaux-arts. The celebrated Asian art dealer Tadamasa Hayashi who had come to Paris as an interpreter for the Exposition Universelle of 1878 helped him in the preparation of LArt japonais. Translated into English in 1891 and into Japanese in 1893 this seminal work proved a landmark publication. Its illustrations include works by artists much admired among French Japonistes including Hokusai and Hiroshige whom Gonse hailed as the greatest paysagist of 19th-century Japan. His views of Yedo he wrote helped us better understand the country than all of previous travelers descriptions. The discovery of this new formal repertoire was to exert a considerable influence on artists of the fin-de-siècle among them Félix Régamey and Henri Guérard who engraved some of the illustrations in this volume. A. Quantin hardcover
