CONNOISSEURSHIP

[Dumas fils: Alexandre Dumas the younger, French novelist and playwright.] Autograph Letter Signed [to a prospective agent?] with regard to the sale of paintings in his Paris house.

Author: 
Dumas fils: Alexandre Dumas the younger (1824-1895), French novelist and playwright, author of ‘La Dame aux Camélias’, on which Giuseppe Verdi based his opera ‘La traviata’
Publication details: 
[1883.] On letterhead of Salneuve par Montcresson (Loiret).
£250.00

An interesting item occupying the zone in which French connoisseurship and literature overlap. In 1880 - three years before the present item - Maurice Mauris (Marchese di Calenzano) described a visit to Dumas fils’s Paris house in Rue de Villers. ‘The walls above the library are enriched with a priceless collection of paintings, modern and antique. Diaz, Fortuny, Marchal, Vernet, Delacroix are there seen at their best. Dumas generally presents himself with a new painting after he has presented a new book to the public.

Keywords:

[Osbert Sitwell and Margaret Barton.] Offprint of their chapter on 'Taste' in 'Johnson's England', presented to Margaret Llewellyn Davies, Peter Pan's aunt, by Margaret Barton, with ANS stating that 'It is one of a "limited edition" of three.'

Author: 
Osbert Sitwell and Margaret Barton [Margaret Llewellyn Davies (1861-1944), general secretary of the Women's Co-Operative Guild; suffragist; Arthur Stanley Turberville; Samuel Johnson]
Publication details: 
Published in 'Johnson's England', ed. A. S. Turberville. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933.
£125.00

40pp., 8vo, with four plates. Paginated 1-40 (the chapter appears with the same pagination at the beginning of the second of the two volumes of the book). Bound in green buckram, with 'TASTE | OSBERT SITWELL | AND | MARGARET BARTON' stamped in gilt on front board. In good condition, on lightly-aged paper, in lightly-worn binding.

Keywords:
Syndicate content