Peter Bichsel   Fine Books

La Motte, Antoine Houdard de. Fables nouvelles, dédiées au roy. Avec un discours sur la fable.

With engr. frontispiece, after Coypel by Tardieu, engr. title-vignette, and 101 engr. vignettes in the text by Gillot, Picart, a.o. XLII, 358, (2) pp. Royal 4to. Contemp. calf over 5 raised bands. Spine gilt with label. Marbled end-papers (front hinge starting). – Paris, (Jean Baptiste Coignard for) Grégoire Dupuis, 1719.

First edition (large paper copy) of La Motte’s 100 fables, divided into five books, together with his theoretical “Discours sur la fable”. La Motte (1672–1731), a progressive exponent in the second so called “querelle des anciens et des modernes”, can be considered the most important fabulist after La Fontaine. His personal aim was to achieve the renown of both Aesop and La Fontaine at the same time. With the introducing dedicatory fable “La Belle et le miroir”, La Motte tries not only to honour and advise the young King Louis XV but also to give an example of his own stilistic ideals like “vraisemblence”, “unité”, and “bienséance”. The copper vignettes of which two thirds are designed and engraved by Watteau’s master Claude Gillot (1673–1722) are an early highlight of French Rococo illustration. “The unerring taste, the originality of composition, and a great ability to create with a few strokes a background and a mood, all these acted together to bring forth one of the most beautiful illustrated books of the 18th century” (Fürstenberg, Das französische Buch im 18. Jahrhundert, p. 53). In some later copies an index printed on different paper is found at the end of the preface. Our copy has a title index in a contemporary hand at the end of the book. – Fabula docet 94; Bodemann 105.1; Cohen/de Ricci 594f. (“Très belle édition rare et recherchée”); Cioranescu 36530; Brunet III, 801; Sander 1095. – Few small marginal tears, minor waterstain to lower margins of book V. Some foxing to margins of first leaves, occasional spots throughout. – Best.-Nr. 5437