Artistes: Mm. Arnout, Bayot, Bichebois, Bour, Boys, Cauche, Cuvillier, Dumouza, Jaime, Nouveau, Provost, Sorrieu, Tirepenne et Villeret.
First edition. 60 tinted lithograph plates after daguerreotypes, each with 3-4pp. of explanatory text. 4to. Contemporary half calf with marbled paper boards, gilt spine, boards and extremities rubbed. Small bookseller’s ticket to upper pastedown, some foxing and offsetting from plates. Paris, Aubert et Cie, 1840.
With beautiful illustrations of the key sights in Paris, lithographed after daguerrotypes. This new photographic technology had only been publicly announced the previous year, and as such, a book like this sought to offer the public a glimpse of this advance in image making. Since the daguerrotype process created a direct print onto a treated surface, it did not allow for the kind of multiples required in the production of a commercially published edition. Therefore the popular publisher Aubert employed the some of the most famous printmakers of the era to translate the photographs onto lithographic stones for duplication.
