Figures de modes Dessinées et gravées à l Eau forte par Vatteau et terminées au burin Par Thomassin le fils [Watteau, Jean-Antoine; engr. Henri-Simon Thomassin] Europe,Fetes,Portraiture

WATTEAU S RARE GALANTE ETCHINGS, EX-COLL. MAX MACHANEK AND JACQUES LEVY. Thomassin, [ca. 1709-1710]. First edition, first state. Etched-engraved title-page and seven etched-engraved plates (variable, ca. 4 15/16" x 3 1/4", 125mm x 82mm). Unbound. Lightly tanned, with mild foxing. Two plates sometime folded in half vertically. Traces of mounts to the verso of the title and to each plate along the top and right edges. Ink ownership mark (a stylized shield with three circles above?) to the title-page. Purple ink ownership stamp of Max Machanek verso to the title and to each plate, with an earlier graphite numeration (R-D.#, viz. Robert-Dumesnil) above. Presented in an envelope with a manuscript copy of Dacier & Vuaflart 44. (Jean-)Antoine Watteau (Vatteau, as here; 1684-1721) was a French painter who epitomized the "galante" style, bridging baroque and rococo. Watteau's vast mythological canvases bear the impression of theatre and its world of gesture that developed from Marie de' Medici's introduction of Italian comedy to the French. Born in Valenciennes, he became identified with Paris. There, the sophistication of the Académie was such that it created a new genre -- the fête galante or cheerful party -- to grant him admission in 1717. It is in the years prior to his full membership in the Académie that he worked with the engraver Henri-Simon Thomassin (1687-1741) to promulgate his drawings via a group of seven eaux fortes (etchings; an "eau forte" being a mordant or biting acid) finished with engraving ("terminer au burin"). The title is difficult to render into English ("figures of fashions" is misleading); perhaps "fashionable types" conveys the sense better. The mid-XIXc multi-volume Peintre-Graveur français by Alexandre-Pierre-François Robert-Dumesnil was long the authority on the subject, and that is what the earliest marking owner has used for his graphite numbering (suggesting that the plates have long been disbound, perhaps even never bound) Four plates of man and three of women are titled thus (our set in its first state, which Robert-Dumesnil classes as "extrêmement rare" even in 1836, without indications of artist of engraver on each plate): 1. L'Homme accoudé 2. Le Promeneur vu de face 3. L'Homme appuyé 4. Le Promeneur vu de profil 5. La Femme marchant à gauche 6. La Femme marchant au fond 7. La Femme assise. The work was followed with Figures françoises & comiques with 12 additional plates; an eighth figured plate -- not by Watteau -- is sometimes lumped in with later states of the present work. Eventually Watteau's etchings would be gathered posthumously from 1735, which is naturally derivative of these individual lifetime publications. Dacier and Vuaflart in their four-volume Jean de Jullienne et les graveurs de Watteau au XVIII (1921-1929) date the work to 1709-1710, noting that "le premier graveur de Watteau, c'est Watteau lui-même, avec les eaux-fortes reproduisant les dessins des Figures de modes (un titre & 7 figures)" (II.111). Their nomenclature differs slightly. Max Machanek (1831-1893) was a German-born iron-monger and industrialist working in Marienthal who was eventually elected to the Moravian Provincial Assembly. He was, more germanely to the present work, a major print-collector, and his holdings (some 2,700 lots) were sold at auction by Amsler & Ruthardt in Berlin in 1891 (23 November and following); the present work does not seem to be among the lots. Jacques Levy (1905-1980) was a steady collector of books from around 1940 until his death, with particular focus on travel and the East. Born in Istanbul, he spent most of his life in New York, where the Central Park West home he shared with his wife, the artist Margot Semac, was entirely subsumed by his book collection. The present volume was lot 361 in the Sotheby's New York sale of his library, 20 April 2012. Cohen-de Ricci 3052; Dacier & Vuaflart III.41, 44, 46, 47, 49-52; Lipperheide 1120; Robert-Dumesnil II pp. 184-186, nos. 1-7.