gay paris
AUBRUN, and Charles Claude BACHELIER. Paris moderne et ses environs d'après la photographie [cover title]. [Paris, Ledot Jeune, c. 1860].
Oblong large 4to. Original brown morocco-backed pebble-grained cloth, spine with raised bands, ruled and lettered in gilt, front cover ruled in blind and lettered in gilt; 50 tinted lithographic plates; light rubbing to extremities, front free endpapers renewed; first plate minimally spotted, one with short maginal tear; otherwise a very good, clean and complete copy.
Very rare pictorial album of Paris during the the Second Empire, the Paris of Jacques Offenbach, urban mass culture and immense wealth and poverty, as described by Zola. The very few albums with that title we were able to trace contain fewer plates, sometimes 48, 45 or only 28. The numbering is not consecutive, which might indicate that the publisher Ledot compiled albums on demand and for different markets. Photography is certainly the basis for many images, with the speeding carriages and the moving crowd of Paris added by the artists.
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