DAUMIER, Honoré — Les étrangers à Paris

Paris: Chez Aubert, 1844. One of Daumier's most Iconic Albums from the early 1840s Published at the height of Parisian Tourism and Bourgeois Curiosity Twenty Magnificent Hand Colored Lithographs DAUMIER, Honoré de. Les Étrangers à Paris. Paris: Chez Aubert, 1844. First edition. Folio (13 1/8 x 9 7/8 inches; 333 x 251 mm). Complete with twenty magnificent hand-colored lithographs heightened with gum arabic, drawn and lithographed by Honoré Daumier, printed on strong wove paper. Publisher's dark blue ribbed cloth, covers bordered in blind, upper cover decoratively lettered in gilt. Smooth spine, original pale yellow endleaves. Sixteen-page Aubert publisher's catalogue at rear, moderately foxed. Plates crisp and luminous, colors vibrant and unfaded, gum arabic highlights glossy and intact; with just a few faint marginal fox spots. A fine, fresh, and very scarce complete copy of this celebrated satirical album, caricaturing foreign tourists and provincials adrift in mid-nineteenth-century Paris. Rarely found with the hand-coloring so vivid and the publisher's binding so well preserved. Les Étrangers à Paris stands as one of Daumier's most iconic albums from the early 1840s, published by Aubert at the height of Parisian tourism and bourgeois curiosity. It forms a satirical ethnography of the provincial, rural, and foreign types who, in increasing numbers, descended upon the capital with wonder - and were swiftly disillusioned or ridiculed. These lithographs were originally issued separately in the Charivari and then collected by Aubert for publication in this folio edition. The rarity of complete hand-colored examples, especially in such crisp condition with the original Aubert publisher's cloth binding and catalogue, cannot be overstated. Two of the lithographs (nos. 3 & 14) are featured in Daumier 120 Great Lithographs edited by Charles F. Ramus (nos. 48 & 49). 1. L'arivée 2. L'Indispensable visite chez le tailleur du Palais-Royal 3. Ce qu'on appèle diner au restaurant 4. Quelques lègères emplèttes 5. Un obligeant cicerone 6. Une émotion au jardin des plantes 7. Une lègère queue a la porte du Palais de L'Industrie 8. Un èpisode de l'Exposition 9. Ce qu'on appelle les sèductions de Paris 10. La visite a L'Hotel des Invalides 11. Une Llègère promenade en omnibus 12. Un diner a prix fixe 13. Un bal champètre de Paris 14. Grandes eaux à Versailles! 15. Les Étrangers dévisagés par eux memes 16. Le portrait au daguéréotype 17. Les magasins de plus en plus monstres 18. Le chapeau qu'on rapporte de Paris 19. Voi-tu cet imbècile qui ne s'appercoit pas que son tonneau fuit.. 20. Le départ Carteret IV, p.130 ("rare et recherché"); L'Archtambault, Catalogue de l'oeuvre lithographié de Daumier (p. 238); Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, 162; Vicaire III, 190. .