Histoire naturelle des oiseaux-mouches, ouvrage orné de planches dessinées et gravées par les meilleurs artistes, et dedié A S. A. R. Mademoiselle. . . WITH Histoire naturelle des colibris, suivie d'un supplément a l'histoire naturelle des oiseaux-mouches; ouvrage orné de planches dessinés et gravées par les meilleurs artistes, et dédié A M. le Baron Cuvier. Par R. P. Lesson. . . AND Les trochilidées ou les colibris et les oiseaux-mouches, suivis d'un index général, dans lequel sont décrits et classés méthodiquement toutes les races et espèces du genre Trochilus. Ouvrage orné de planches dessinées et gravées par les meilleurs artistes, par R. P. Lesson. . .
THE BRAYBROOKE–BOURLON de ROUVRE SET
Histoire naturelle des oiseaux-mouches, ouvrage orné de planches dessinées et gravées par les meilleurs artistes, et dedié A S. A. R. Mademoiselle; par R. P. Lesson, officier de santé de première classe de la Marine Royale; professeur de botanique a l’école de médecine navale du port de Rocheford; chevalier de l’ordre royal de la Légion d’Honneur; adjoint correspondant de l’académie royale de médecine; membre titulaire de la société d’histoire naturelle de Paris; de celle de chimie médicale, etc.; auteur de la zoologie du voyage autour du monde de la corvette la Coquille, publié par ordre du roi. Paris: Arthus Bertrand[, 1829–1830.] First edition.
with
———. Histoire naturelle des colibris, suivie d’un supplément a l’histoire naturelle des oiseaux-mouches; ouvrage orné de planches dessinés et gravées par les meilleurs artistes, et dédié A M. le Baron Cuvier. Par R. P. Lesson. Paris: Arthus Bertrand[, 1830–1832.] First edition.
and
———. Les trochilidées ou les colibris et les oiseaux-mouches, suivis d’un index général, dans lequel sont décrits et classés méthodiquement toutes les races et espèces du genre Trochilus. Ouvrage orné de planches dessinées et gravées par les meilleurs artistes, par R. P. Lesson. Paris: Arthus Betrand[, 1832–1833.] First edition
Octavo (9 3/16” x 5 11/16”, 233mm x 145mm).
Oiseaux-mouches: binder’s blank, a4(–a1) b-c8 d4(–d4) 1-148, binder’s blank [$2 signed]. 134 leaves, pp. [4] (title, blank, 2pp. dedication) vij viij-xlvj 1 2-223 [1] (blank). With 86 hand-colored engraved plates, numbered 1-48 48bis 49-85.
Colibris: binder’s blank, π4 (–π1, π2+χ1?) 1-128 χ2, binder’s blank [$2 signed; –12]. 102 leaves, pp. [4] (title, blank, dedication, blank) vij viij-x 1 2-192 [4] (2pp. index to the Colibris, 2pp. index to the Supplément). [=viii, 192, iv] With 66 hand-colored engraved plates, numbered 1-12 12bis 13 13bis 14-25, 21-39 (for the Supplément).
Trochilidées: binder’s blank, π2(–π1) a2 1-108 114 χ2 2a4 2b-e4 2f2, binder’s blank [$2 signed; 4s $1 signed]. 111 leaves, pp. [2] (title, blank) j ij-iv 1 2-168 [4] (3pp. contents) 2j-iij (Index général et synoptique des oiseaux du genre Trochilus, par R.P. Lesson. Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1832; blank; text) 2iv-xliij [1] (blank). [=vi, 168, iv; 44] With 66 hand-colored engraved plates, numbered 1-66 (with no. 7 erroneously labeled 35 (perhaps since it is opposite p. 35) and corrected in graphite).
With 218 hand-colored engraved plates in toto by Marie-Nicolas Oudet, Jean-Louis-Denic Coutant and A.P. Teillard after Jean-Gabriel Prêtre and Louis Bévalet, some printed in color and hand-finished.
Bound in XIXc (English?) green morocco with a wide gilt border. On the spines, five raised bands. Author and titles gilt to the second panel. Gilt fillet to the edges of the boards. Triple gilt fillet to the turn-ins. All edges of the text-block gilt.
The spines a little sunned. The odd nick or scuff to the bindings, but altogether near fine. Internally, foxing (particularly to the preliminaries), essentially confined to the text. Some plates tanned, with offsetting or soiling verso; each plate with a paper guard, many of which with offsetting. Each volume lacking the half-title leaf. A tall set, with preserved deckles particularly to the lower edge. Armorial bookplate of Lord Braybrooke (over an earlier bookplate?) to the front paste-down of each volume, with (his?) manuscript numeration (“42”) above. Graphite notes (including plate count and cost) in the hand of Evrard Bourlon de Rouvre to the recto of the front binder’s blank of each volume.
René Primevère Lesson (1794–1849) became a naturalist by way of his medical practice in the French navy of the Napoleonic era. First as a surgeon and then as a pharmacist, he won a place as a naturalist on the circumnavigation of Louis-Isidore Duperrey aboard La Coquille about a decade before Charles Darwin’s voyage aboard Beagle in that role. Lesson, the first naturalist to observe birds of paradise in the wild, produced in the present works the landmark treatise on hummingbirds (the Trochilidae; “colibri” is sometimes called a native Caribbean word, but its etymology is ultimately unclear; “oiseau-mouche” translates literally to “fly (i.e., the insect) bird”), which inhabit the whole of the Americas ― particularly near the tropics.
The project began in 1829 and ran through 1832 with 44 deliveries to subscribers; indeed, in his address to the subscriber in the Trochilidées (pt. iij–iv, dated December 1831) Lesson proposes a fourth volume that never appeared. The address shows an author confident in his wide public: “Pour les naturalistes, ce livred es Trochilidées sera le complément indispensable de la monographie des oiseaux du genre Trochilus; pour les Bibliophiles et les dames, c’est un album de dessins élégans; pour tous, un livre curieux, exécuté avec soin, plein de figures gracieuses, mignon dans son format, coquet dans son exécution.”[1] Lesson engaged the greatest artists of the subject in France, Jean-Gabriel Prêtre and Louis Bévalet, to draw the specimens he collected. The technique of the plates is variable: many are simply hand-colored engravings, whereas some are color-printed and hand-finished.
Richard Griffin, 3rd Baron Braybrooke (1783–1858) was the first holder of that title to grow up at Audley End, the Jacobean “prodigy” house considered by some the finest in England. A childhood in the gardens of Capability Brown doubtless instilled in Braybrooke a fine appreciation of the natural world. He is best remembered — if not fondly — as the editor of Pepys’s diaries who rather brutally bowdlerized them beginning in 1825 and continuing through the Victorian era. The set later came to be owned by Evrard Marie Bourlon de Rouvre (1923–1979), whose family became stupendously wealthy through their sugar refineries, perhaps the source of interest in these avian consumers of sugar-water. The set was lot 109 in the second Drouot sale of his library, 22 May 1980.
Anker 291, 293–294; Nissen, IVB 547–548–549.
[1] For naturalists, this book of Trochilidae will be the indispensable complement to the treatment of the genus Trochilus; for bibliophiles and ladies, it is an album of elegant engravings; for all, a curious book, executed with care, full of lovely plates, handy in its format and altogether charming.
Item #JLR0849
Price: $24,000