DESGRAVIERS (Auguste). - Lot 72

DESGRAVIERS (Auguste). Le Parfait chasseur, ou l'art du valet de limier ; augmenté D'un Traité de Vénerie pour toutes les Chasses, même celle du Vol, auquel on a joint Appendix des meilleurs Remèdes pour la guérison des maladies et accidents ordinaires aux Chevaux de Chasse et aux Chiens-Courants ; Et un Vocabulaire général à l'usage des Chasseurs. S.l. : s.n., 1810. - In-8, 201 x 122 : xvj, 431, 16 pp. of music, 12 plates. Long-grained red morocco, gilt roulette with entwined rings and gilt arms in the center of the boards, smooth spine decorated, gilt roulette inside, gilt edges (period binding). Thiébaud, col. 269. - Manessier de La Lance, I, p. 392. - Maillard, De futaie en folio... Bibliothèque Robert Louis Frank, I, p. 175 (Jeanson copy). Genuine second edition of this very complete hunting treatise by Auguste-Claude Desgraviers (1749-1822), former cavalry officer and commander of the Prince de Conti's hunts before the Revolution, to whom the original 1784 edition was dedicated. It contains the epistle and the preface of 1784 as well as a foreword in which the author protests against the edition given by his brother in 1804 of his Essai de Vénerie. According to Thiébaud, the copies containing these introductory pieces are "very rare" because "very few volumes must have been sold before the reworking of the title" and of these leaves. The illustration consists of 12 woodcut plates, representing smoke and game prints. Four of them are printed on two folded leaves. Thiébaud indicates that they are taken from Le Verrier de La Conterie and Gaffet de La Briffadière. At the end are sixteen pages of music, each including a fanfare score: La Royale, La Petite royale, La Fanfare du roi, La Dauphine, La Discrette, La Fanfare de la reine, Le Vol-ce-l'est, Le Débuchet, L'Eau, L'Halali, La Retraite prise, La St Hubert, La Bourgogne, La Dampierre, L'Azur and La Fontainebleau. A PRECIOUS COPY ON VELLUM PAPER, BOUND WITH THE ARMS OF LOUIS XVIII. It is almost identical to the one in the library of Marcel Jeanson (1987, n° 173). Thiébaud knew only four copies of this edition with the introductory pieces, of which only one on vellum paper, the one of Jeanson. This one is thus the second known, in a similar condition, with the arms of Louis XVIII which indicates that it was certainly intended for a member of the royal family. The binding, although not signed, comes from one of the great workshops of the time. The roulette with entwined rings was notably used by Jean-Claude Bozérian. A very well preserved copy despite some traces of rubbing at the hinge of the second plate.