One of Five Luxury Copies Containing Four Previously Unpublished Goya Etchings
L'Art. Revue Hebdomadaire Illustrée. Volumes VIII–IX. Paris & London, A. Ballue, 1877.
Among the many nineteenth-century publications devoted to Francisco Goya, few can rival the extraordinary circumstances of this copy.
Prepared for Prince Demidoff and bound by Marius-Michel, it belongs to the luxury edition of L'Art limited to only five copies. More importantly, it contains four previously unpublished etchings from Goya's Disparates, each preserved in four distinct states.
The three states before letters were printed for the luxury edition alone. Since only five copies were produced, there cannot exist more than five impressions of any one of them.
Four Goyas Unknown to the Public
The four etchings included here are Disparate conocido (Harris 266), Disparate puntual (Harris 267), Disparate de bestia (Harris 268) and Disparate de toritos (Harris 269).
Goya cut them in etching and burnished aquatint and published none of them. When he left Spain he abandoned the plates at the Quinta del Sordo. They passed to his heirs and remained in the family until the death of the artist's son, Francisco Javier, in May 1854. In October 1862 the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando acquired the series, and in 1864 published eighteen of the plates under a title Goya never gave them, Los Proverbios — three hundred copies for sale and sixty for the academicians, a print-run of three hundred and sixty.
These four were not among them. They had been separated from the set and had become the property of 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."
Not until the appearance of L'Art in Paris in 1877 were they printed and published for the first time.
The Copper Plates
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, and the Société des Amis du Louvre bought the plates instead.
The century between can be followed without a gap. When L'Art's last owner, Paul Leroi, died in 1907, the review closed and its assets were sold, and the four coppers were bought by the print publisher Edmond Sagot. From Sagot they passed to his son-in-law Maurice Le Garrec, and they 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. There they carry the inventory numbers 11440 to 11443 [Orozco, p. 353]. From Goya's own hands to the Louvre, the line of ownership is unbroken.
The Louvre holds the four coppers. It does not hold impressions of this kind. The three states before letters exist nowhere but in the five copies of the édition grand luxe. This is one of those five.
The Louvre's inventory numbers do not run in Harris order. Disparate conocido is Harris 266, Gassier–Wilson 1601, Prado 3067, and Louvre inv. 11440; Disparate puntual is Harris 267, Gassier–Wilson 1602, Prado 3068, and Louvre inv. 11443; Disparate de bestia is Harris 268, Gassier–Wilson 1603, Prado 3069, and Louvre inv. 11441; Disparate de toritos is Harris 269, Gassier–Wilson 1604, Prado 3070, and Louvre inv. 11442.
Four States of Each Etching
Each of the four etchings appears here in four different forms. The first is a proof before letters printed in black on vellum. The second is a proof before letters printed in charcoal grey on antique Japanese paper. The third is a proof before letters printed in reddish brown on Whatman paper. The fourth is the finished lettered state printed in black on ribbed handmade paper.
Miguel Orozco describes the composition of the luxury edition precisely:
"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 is the reddish brown. Orozco's four states are the four states of the present copy, one for one, and his account confirms that the three variations before letters were made for five copies and no more.
Harris does not record this state in this colour. For each plate he lists working proofs under his category I, but at most one copy in each case using the already-applied aquatint technique. The three avant la lettre states in this copy therefore come as close as physically possible to Goya's original state of the plates.
The Demidoff Bindings
The present copy was prepared for Prince Demidoff and bound by Marius-Michel, who bound nineteen large-folio volumes for the Demidoff library. Executed in dark brown morocco with elaborate coloured leather inlays, they belong to the most ambitious binding projects of his early career.
The front cover is dominated by a Renaissance framework enclosing a floral composition that seems almost to grow across the leather. The title L'Art is inlaid at the centre. The rear cover is more restrained, while the interiors are lined with richly patterned brocade and marbled doublures.
Michel dispensed with gold tooling on the covers altogether, and the design still feels modern for it.
Béraldi singled out the Demidoff set among Marius-Michel's exceptional works:
"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
Offered here are two volumes of that nineteen: volumes VIII and IX, the year 1877 — the two that carry the Goyas.
The Last Intact Copy?
Proof impressions from the luxury edition occasionally surface on the market, almost always removed from their original volumes. When they do appear, they come out of broken-up copies of the deluxe edition.
The present copy appears to have escaped that fate. Protected within the Demidoff bindings, the sixteen Goya impressions remain in the form in which they were issued. The series stayed in the Demidoff family until modern times; when the remaining volumes later came back through the trade, the Goya prints were no longer in them.
Their survival is inseparable from the survival of the copy itself. Protected by its bindings, this copy may well be the last to have survived intact in original condition.
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 on vélin. With the four Goya etchings (Harris 266–269), each in four states, facing pp. 6, 40, 56 and 82 of volume IX, and hundreds of further original etchings and woodcuts, most likewise in four states. Contemporary dark brown morocco over five raised bands; covers with large polychrome inlays within a Renaissance frame, the title L'Art inlaid at the centre; no gold tooling whatever 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
The plates. Goya left them at the Quinta del Sordo, and after his death they passed to his heirs, remaining with the family until his son Francisco Javier died in May 1854. Eugenio Lucas Velázquez acquired them about 1856, in all likelihood as payment for his part in appraising the Black Paintings. On his death in 1870 they were offered to the Academia, which did not agree terms, and they left Spain for L'Art in Paris. When Paul Leroi died in 1907 the review was wound up and the plates were bought by Edmond Sagot; they passed to his son-in-law Maurice Le Garrec and remained with the galerie Sagot-Le Garrec at 10 rue de Buci until July 2011, when the Société des Amis du Louvre bought them for the Chalcographie du Louvre, where they are inv. 11440–11443 [Orozco, p. 353].
This copy. Bound for Pavel Pavlovich Demidov, second Prince of San Donato (1839–1885), by Marius-Michel. The binding is itself in the literature: Béraldi singled the Demidoff L'Art out as exceptional work and described these very covers [La Reliure du XIXe siècle, III, p. 109, no. 133, illustrated]. The volumes remained in the Demidoff family until recent times; when the rest of the nineteen-volume series came back through the trade, the Goyas were no longer in it.
References
Tomás Harris, Goya: Engravings and Lithographs (Oxford, 1964), II, nos. 266 (p. 402), 267 (p. 403), 268 (pp. 405–406), 269 (p. 407). Delteil 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. 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. Vicaire I, 97–101.
Price on request.
