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Summary
Author: (Landseer) Stephens, F.G.
Title: Memoirs of Sir Edwin Landseer. A sketch of the life of the artist, illustrated with reproductions of twenty-four of his most popular works. Being a new edition of "The Early Works of Sir Edwin Landseer".
Publication: London, George Bell and Sons 1874.
Price: £190
Reference: 10968
Full Description
8vo. xv + (1) + 184pp, 20 actual mounted Woodburytype photo plates, 4 other woodcut plates. Publisher's full gilt stamped red morocco, all edges gilt.
First edition under this title of Stephens's biography of Sir Edwin Landseer (1802-1873), the foremost animal painter of the Victorian era, and a particularly adept painter of dogs and stags. Stephens had had an earlier book on Landseer published in 1869, but the present book is revised and extended to cover Landseer's entire output. Its most notable feature is however its use of "permanent photographs printed by the Woodbury Company" to illustrate twenty of Landseer's most successful paintings (the book of 1869 had also had photo plates, but there had only been sixteen of these), and Stephens and his publishers were ahead of their time in their use of photography to illustrate the work of a contemporary artist. The present copy is one of a relatively small number of copies issued by its publishers in a red morocco, gilt, binding, with gilt-stamped images on both covers of one of the sculptured lions designed by Landseer alongside Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square.