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Summary
Author: Bouchet, Jules
Title: Compositions antiques. Deuxième édition.
Publication: Paris, the author nd (1850s).
Price: £380
Reference: 01365
Full Description
Oblong small folio. 14pp, engr title leaf, 16 engr plates. The plates are india-paper proofs. Contemporary qtr morocco, cloth sides. Some slight spotting on margins not affecting engraved surface.
A collection of studies by the architect Jules Fréderic Bouchet (1799-1860), a pupil of Debret and Percier, who was second in the Grand Prix competition in 1822 and is best known for his published reconstructions of the Villa Pia and Pliny's Laurentine villa. Bouchet was a convinced classicist and he intended the present volume as a corrective to the prevailing enthusiasm for mediæval architecture; its combination of views of Pompeian-type town architecture and carelessly draped foreground figures presages the view of the classical past taken by the painter Alma-Tadema or by twentieth century Hollywood. but the drawings themselves are as carefully done as befitted a pupil of Percier. The books appears to have been privately published by Bouchet himself and is not common today. This seemingly unrecorded second edition is a reissue of the first edition, 1851, with a reset text but the same plates.