Histoire naturelle des oiseaux Natural History of Birds
177089949Paris: Imprimerie royale 1770. Fine. Mrs Necker: ""Animals seemed to be the most distant from us and Buffon's art lay in constantly bringing them closer"" our own translation Imprimerie royale Paris 1770-1783 20 x 26.4 cm relié First edition from the Imprimerie Royale complete in nine quarto volumes with all 262 black-and-white engraved plates. Contemporary full mottled calf spines with raised bands decorated with guilloche tooling and gilt ornaments in the compartments red morocco lettering-pieces and numbering-pieces triple gilt fillet border on boards double gilt fillet on board edges marbled endpapers and pastedowns marbled edges. Minor variations in the tooling on volume 3. In this set some headcaps missing 6 cm joints split at foot of volume 1 6.5 cm and 6 cm at foot of volume 2 3.5 cm at head of volume 3 corners bumped scratches and minor restoration to boards including a more significant repair on volume 7 measuring 11 cm browning in left margin of lower board of volume 4. In this copy: some worming several instances of dampstaining throughout the set more pronounced in volumes 1 3 and 8 some tears restored on the title page and on pp. ix and xxiii of volume 1 also restored on p. 496 of volume 2 on pp. 259 and 260 of volume 3 on pp. 481 and 482 of volume 4 and on pp. 173 to 176 of volume 5. Copy with some marginal annotations: in volume 2 a manuscript footnote added in ink on p. 541 ""Voyez les Planches enluminures n°491"" erroneous manuscript dates in ink in volumes 2 and 8 the number ""18"" annotated in ink in the upper right corner of the rear endpaper of volume 9. Copy richly illustrated with drawings by Jacques de Sève engraved by Robert de Launay Lucas Michel Madeleine-Thérèse Rousselet C. Baron Hubert Catherine Haussard Carl Gottlieb Guttenberg Jean-Guillaume Blanchon Menil Dufour Louis Claude Legrand Claude Mathieu Fessard Elisabeth Haussard François Hubert A.-B. Duhamel Mlle Mansard C. Baquoy Heinrich Guttenberg Laurent Guyot Benazeth Schmitz Marie-Anne Rousselet M. R. veuve Tardieu Louis-Gabriel Monnier Pierre-Étienne Moitte Jean-Louis de Lignon Levillain N. du Four Thomas Chambars Nicolas Thomas Luigi Valperga and George Louis Biosse. Accompanied by two additional plates heightened in color numbered XX and XXII from a volume 7 of the Histoire naturelle des oiseaux. The illustrator Jacques de Sève's main work was unquestionably the Histoire naturelle générale et particulière for which he executed nearly 2000 drawings. Unlike the illustrations he produced for other sections of Buffon's monumental work made primarily from stuffed specimens his work on birds was essentially executed from living models. To accomplish this vast project Jacques de Sève drew inspiration from the works of the king's ""Peintre ordinaire"" Jean-Baptiste Oudry. This judicious decision won him the favor of the queen a great admirer of the master of animal painting. By incorporating small Boucher-style putti in the introductory vignettes of certain volumes of the Histoire naturelle des oiseaux Sève also gained the good graces of the king's mistress. These illustrations at once decorative and scholarly which appear in the present first edition were not retained in the duodecimo edition. A superb complete copy of Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon's Histoire naturelle des oiseaux by the French Pliny. As Ferdinand Hoefer wrote this work maintains the same ""magnificence of style"" as the other publications in the Histoire naturelle générale et particulière. Imprimerie royale hardcover
