Seventeen volumes of Dickens' works, each with an elaborate illuminated bookplate for Charlotte Louise Burckhardt (1862-1892), the model for John Singer Sargent's famous portrait 'Lady with the Rose'
Leipzig, Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1842 to 1870 (but all are 1870s reprints).
Small octavo, thirty-one volumes bound as seventeen, some volumes with plates, as issued.
In a contemporary continental binding of quarter morocco and papered boards (the Achatmarmorpapier of the covers likely suggests a German binder, and he has misspelt one title as 'Hand Times'); covers slightly worn; occasional pencilling; a few other minor signs of age and handling; in very good condition.
The unique bookplates, hand-painted in shell gold and other metallic paints by an accomplished amateur, all feature variations on the initials of Charlotte Louise Burckhardt (1862-1892, later Ackerley), whose ownership signature (dated 1880) is pencilled in each volume. We presume she was also the artist. The bookplates are very much in keeping with the genteel accomplishments of a wealthy woman moving in artistic circles, influenced by the fashionable medieval revival movement of the time and by practical guides such as Tymms and Wyatt's 'Art of Illuminating' (1860). One striking design features a King of Hearts playing card motif, others contain grotesques and floriate designs, and others simpler geometric patterns. Fourteen of the bookplates feature the initials 'C.L.B', 'L.B.', or simply 'L' (either separately or as a monogram), while the remaining three (evidently executed after her marriage) give them as 'C.L.A.' or 'L.A.'. These three later plates use a much more sombre palette, with the metallic paints replaced by solid blacks. '(Charlotte) Louise Burckhardt (1862-92) was the younger daughter of Edward Burckhardt, a Swiss merchant, and his American wife, Mary Elizabeth (née Tomes). The Burckhardts lived in Europe for many years, principally in Paris and Wiesbaden. Louise, her sister Valerie, Fanny Watts ..., Sargent and Emily [Sargent] were part of the same circle ... A romance between Sargent and Louise, perhaps initiated by Mrs Burckhardt, developed in the early 1880s and there was talk of an engagement, but prospects of a marriage seem to have evaporated by the summer of 1883, when Vernon Lee described Miss Burckhardt as having "gone off the horizon" ("Vernon Lee's Letters" 1937, p.116). Louise married Roger Ackerley, an Englishman, in 1889. After a protracted honeymoon in various fashionable European resorts and cities, they settled in Paris, but Louise became ill and died some eighteen months later' (Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray: 'John Singer Sargent. The Early Portraits' 1998, page 65). Roger Ackerley was the father of the writer J.R. Ackerley, who mentions her in passing in his memoir 'My Father and Myself'. Sargent painted several portraits of the Burckhardt family, but the most notable is his 1882 full-length portrait of Louise, now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, first exhibited in 1882 under the title 'Portrait de Mlle ***' and now better known as 'Lady with the Rose'. All volumes are from Tauchnitz's Collection of British Authors series. All have the complete list of Dickens' works on the verso of the half-title, and must therefore be reprints from the 1870s. The set contains: 'Pickwick Papers', 'Oliver Twist', 'Martin Chuzzlewit', 'Dombey and Son', 'No Thoroughfare', 'Little Dorrit', 'Great Expectations', 'Our Mutual Friend', 'David Copperfield', 'Master Humphrey's Clock' (including 'The Old Curiosity Shop' and 'Barnaby Rudge'), 'Hard Times', 'Edwin Drood', and several shorter works. The seventeen volumes are numbered (by the binder) between 1 and 22; the five volumes not present must have been sold individually, likely in the early 20th century (the works are priced individually in pencil by a bookseller). [17 items].
Item #147040
Price (AUD):
$2,500.00