Knip, Antoinette Pauline Jacqueline and Temminck, Coenraad Jacob
£22,500
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
Auction: 19 June 2018 at 12:00 BST
Description
Les Pigeons. Paris: Mme Knip & Bellizard, Dufour & Cie., Typographie de Firmin Didot, [1838-43]. Second edition of volume 1, First edition of volume 2, large folio (533 x 348mm.), 2 volumes, [4], 135, 128, 30, [3]; [4], 114, [2]; half-titles, 147 plates printed in colours and finished by hand after Knip, by César Macret , tissue guards, contemporary green quarter morocco, spines gilt, lightly rubbed, some plates with slight offsetting, discolouration or light spotting
Footnote
Provenance: Pencil note on rear endpaper "Complete, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, GHB"; The Library of a Country House.
Note: A tall complete copy of Knip's masterpiece, with the very rare second volume published in 1838-43, volume II "SAID TO BE PROBABLY THE RAREST ITEM IN THE WHOLE OF ORNITHOLOGICAL LITERATURE" (Wood), containing "AMONG THE FINEST OF ALL BIRD PLATES" (Fine Bird Books). This work contains 2 of the very rare plates "avant lettres" not referred to in the standard bibliographies.
Publication of the work had commenced in parts in 1808 under the longer title Histoire naturelle générale des Pigeons but rivalry between the artist, Antoinette Knip (née Courcelles) and the author of the text, Coenraad Temminck, led Madame Knip at the publication of the 9th (of 15) parts to appropriate the work to herself, issuing the work under the revised title Les Pigeons, par Madame Knip, née Pauline de Coucelles, with Temminck's role relegated beneath to "Le text par C.J. Temminck". However the copy she sent Temminck did not have the altered title so by the time the work came out and he saw the altered title it was too late. This publishing history explains the hiatus betwwen p. 13 of the Discours and the first leaf of text, describing plate 1, being numbered as [p.23]. Pauline Knip had powerful friends at court, being a close friend of Marie Louise, husband of Napoleon Bonaparte, and Temminck found it impossible to get justice, his only recourse being to republish the text in 3 octavo volumes in 1813-1815.
Antoinette Pauline Knip was an exceptional ornithological artist and in 1805 had provided the beautiful plates for Desmaret's Histoire naturelle des tangaras, des manakins, et des todiers. One of the more famous prints in Les Pigeons is of the Mauritius blue pigeon, now extinct. A copy of this work, quite possibly Temminck's own copy, with the text originally envisaged by Temminck, and with 5 original unsigned watercolours, most probably by Knip, and with additional hand-colouring to the perches, was sold at Christie's, 28 November 2001, lot 58, (£30,000).
[Fine Bird Books 86; Nissen IVB 511; Zimmer 356]