One of Five Grand-Luxury Copies of the First Publication of Goya's Four Additional Disparates
L'Art. Revue Hebdomadaire Illustrée. Volumes VIII–IX. Paris & London, A. Ballue, 1877.
From the nineteen-volume series of L'Art bound by Marius-Michel for Prince Demidoff, this is copy no. 5 of the five-copy grand-luxury issue. It contains the first formal publication of Goya's four additional Disparates, each represented by four impressions: three avant la lettre printing variants and the final lettered state.
Beyond the lettered impression carried by the ordinary issue, each of the five copies received three further impressions of every plate, pulled before the letter was engraved: in natural sienna on J. Whatman Turkey Mill wove paper, in black on laid Japan paper, and in black on vellum. Four plates, four impressions each: sixteen.
The Four Additional Disparates
Goya worked the twenty-two copperplates now known as the Disparates or Proverbios circa 1815–1824 and published no edition in his lifetime. The plates remained with his son Javier when Goya left Spain; their subsequent early history is only partly understood. Eighteen reached the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando and were first published in 1864 under a title Goya never gave them, Los Proverbios. Four others — Disparate conocido (Harris 266), Disparate puntual (Harris 267), Disparate de bestia (Harris 268) and Disparate de toritos (Harris 269) — had become separated from the group and were first formally published in L'Art in Paris in 1877.
They are etchings and aquatints by Goya, printed posthumously by François Liénard in Paris from Goya's original copperplates. The British Museum records its 1877 sheet accordingly: print made by Francisco de Goya, printed by François Liénard.
Before 1877 the four plates had passed to the painter Eugenio Lucas Velázquez, who took part in the appraisal of the Black Paintings of the Quinta del Sordo in October 1856 and, as Orozco puts it, "it is quite possible that he received them in compensation for that work."
The Copperplates
On Lucas's death in 1870 the four coppers were offered to the Academia. "The lack of agreement led them to finally leave Spain, being acquired by the magazine L'Art. Revue hebdomadaire illustrée in Paris" [Orozco, p. 353]. A hundred and forty-one years later the Calcografía Nacional moved to buy them back and a verbal agreement was reached; the sale did not complete. When L'Art's last owner, Paul Leroi, died in 1907 the review closed and the plates were bought by the print publisher Edmond Sagot; from Sagot they passed to his son-in-law Maurice Le Garrec and remained the property of the galerie Sagot-Le Garrec at 10 rue de Buci in Paris until July 2011, when the Société des Amis du Louvre acquired them for the Chalcographie du Louvre, inv. 11440–11443 [Orozco, p. 353].
The Louvre's inventory numbers do not run in Harris order. Disparate conocido is Harris 266, Gassier–Wilson 1601, Prado 3067, Louvre inv. 11440; Disparate puntual is Harris 267, Gassier–Wilson 1602, Prado 3068, Louvre inv. 11443; Disparate de bestia is Harris 268, Gassier–Wilson 1603, Prado 3069, Louvre inv. 11441; Disparate de toritos is Harris 269, Gassier–Wilson 1604, Prado 3070, Louvre inv. 11442.
The Louvre holds the four copperplates. No comparable five-copy ensemble is identified in its public online record.
The Two Issues, and Sixteen Impressions
The ordinary issue of L'Art carried the four lettered impressions in black on bone-toned laid paper. Alongside it a grand-luxury issue of five copies was made. Miguel Orozco sets out its composition:
"When in 1877 the Parisian magazine L'Art published the other four plates, in addition to the current edition that included each of the prints in black ink on bony-toned laid paper, were made five copies in which three variations made from each copper and prior to the engraving of the letters were included. Thus, each of these five copies contained the following prints obtained from the same copper: the first on laid paper of a bone tone with black ink, including handwriting with authorship and title; the second on wove paper with natural sienna ink; the third also before letters on Japanese laid paper with black ink; and finally the fourth, also before letters, on vellum with black ink."
— Miguel Orozco, The Complete Prints of Francisco de Goya, p. 355
Whatman is a wove paper and natural sienna the reddish brown, so Orozco's four forms are the four forms of the present copy, one for one. José Manuel Matilla, cataloguing the Banco de España's sheets, describes the same arrangement independently: five copies were made "de cada uno de los números de la revista" — of each of the numbers of the review — each carrying, alongside the lettered print, "tres variaciones realizadas a partir de cada cobre antes del grabado de la letra," three variations taken from each copper before the engraving of the letter. Matilla adds that the first three were bound in, while the vellum impression, "por su material de mayor nobleza," was laid in loose between the pages of the text. The present copy therefore contains sixteen impressions of the four compositions.
The four forms are properly described as three avant la lettre printing variants and the final lettered state, not as four successive states of the copperplate: a state records a physical alteration to the plate, and these are differentiated by support, ink and wiping. Harris appears not to record the sienna-on-Whatman variant; his entries stand at II, pp. 402–407, where for each plate he lists working proofs under category I, at most one in each case using the already-applied aquatint. Those working proofs precede the 1877 printing, so the impressions before letters in this copy are not represented as the only ones of their kind that can exist.
What "Closer to Goya" Can Mean Here
José Manuel Matilla, writing on the Banco de España's copy, notes that the 1877 impressions were wiped unusually clean, leaving the light areas of the support largely free of plate tone. In that specific respect they may preserve Goya's expressive use of white more clearly than the more heavily toned Academy edition of 1864. The vellum, the Japanese paper and the sienna ink are choices of the 1877 Parisian luxury publication, not materials documented as having been selected by Goya; the Banco sheets carry the watermark "J. Whatman / Turkey Mill / 1875," almost half a century after Goya's death.
The Demidoff–Marius-Michel Bindings
The two volumes form part of the nineteen-volume series of L'Art bound by Marius-Michel for Prince Demidoff and documented by Henri Béraldi as exceptional work.
"As exceptional work, one must cite two copies of the journal L'Art, in folio. The one, bound to the order of the journal's management, comprises only four or five volumes. The other series, bound for Prince Demidoff, comprises nineteen volumes. Dark brown morocco, the framework of the decoration after La Vallière, dark green laurel, a ribbon with red reverse, ornamental flora in red and orange."
— Henri Béraldi, La Reliure du XIXe siècle, III, p. 109, no. 133
The front cover carries a Renaissance framework enclosing a floral composition inlaid in coloured leathers, the title L'Art inlaid at the centre; the rear cover is more restrained; the interiors are lined with patterned brocade and marbled doublures. Michel dispensed with gold tooling on the covers altogether. Béraldi names only "Prince Demidoff"; the identification with Pavel Pavlovich Demidov, second Prince of San Donato (1839–1885), is probable rather than documented.
Offered here are volumes VIII and IX of that nineteen-volume run: the two volumes for 1877, including the Goya-bearing volume IX. A visually matching 1879 volume, explicitly Tome XVIII of the collection, appeared on the market in 2011 — evidence that the original series was later dispersed.
Rarity and Survival
The Banco de España preserves another of the five special copies; its ensemble is incomplete, lacking the vellum impression of Disparate de bestia. The present copy retains all sixteen Goya impressions in their original publication context. Proof impressions from the luxury issue surface on the market almost always removed from their volumes. Until the remaining numbered copies are traced, this is described as one of the few complete copies presently known rather than as the sole surviving intact copy.
Collation
L'Art. Revue Hebdomadaire Illustrée. Volumes VIII–IX (volumes 1–2 of the third year). Paris & London, A. Ballue, 1877. Large folio (427 × 304 mm). 2 leaves, 297 pp., 1 errata leaf; 2 leaves, 324 pp. Copy no. 5 of five of the édition grand luxe. With the four Goya etchings (Harris 266–269), each represented by four impressions, facing pp. 6, 40, 56 and 82 of volume IX, together with numerous further original prints in variant impressions. Contemporary dark brown morocco over five raised bands; covers with large polychrome leather inlays within a Renaissance framework, the title L'Art inlaid at the centre; no gold tooling on the covers; brocade endleaves framed by six gilt fillets, marbled doublures, all edges gilt. Signed Marius Michel.
Condition
Interior as new; the vellum proofs very slightly warped on their backing. Bindings immaculate but for slight rubbing to the bands and joints, unavoidable given the size and weight of the volumes.
Provenance
From the nineteen-volume series of L'Art bound by Marius-Michel for Prince Demidoff and documented by Béraldi, La Reliure du XIXe siècle, III, p. 109, no. 133. Any later family descent is stated only to the extent documentary evidence supports it. — The Heribert Tenschert Collection.
References
Tomás Harris, Goya: Engravings and Lithographs (Oxford, 1964), II, nos. 266 (p. 402), 267 (p. 403), 268 (pp. 405–406), 269 (p. 407). Loys Delteil, Le Peintre-graveur illustré, XV: Francisco Goya (Paris, 1922), nos. 220–223. Gassier & Wilson, Vie et œuvre de Francisco de Goya (1970), 1601–1604. Miguel Orozco, The Complete Prints of Francisco de Goya, pp. 353, 355, 391–395. José Manuel Matilla, in Banco de España, Colección, Disparates, cat. G_2357. British Museum, Disparate conocido, 1877 impression, and the François Liénard authority record. Henri Béraldi, La Reliure du XIXe siècle, III, p. 109, no. 133. Pascal Torres, "Quatre Disparates de Francisco Goya entrent à la Chalcographie," La Revue des musées de France. Revue du Louvre, 2012-1, pp. 16–19. Georges Vicaire, Manuel de l'amateur de livres du XIXe siècle (Paris, 1894), I, cols. 97–101, on L'Art.
