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CLAUDE HOIN. GOUACHES, PASTELS, MINIATURES.
(Paris: Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1900). 273 x 194 mm. (10 7/8 x 7 1/2"). 112 pp. No. 22 OF 50 COPIES ON JAPON (from a total edition of 150 copies).
Lovely red morocco by Pagnant (stamp-signed in gilt on front turn-in), French fillet border, smooth spine with gilt lettering and elegant gilt tooling, thick turn-ins with multiple gilt rolls and rules, swirling acanthus at corners and sides, and gilt shell tools in each corner, doublures and endleaves of pale yellow silk with a pattern of ogival diapers, each embroidered with a small pink and red flower with green leaves at center, all edges gilt. With the original printed paper wrappers bound in. With black & white frontispiece and four plates in two states (one before letters), all with original tissue guards, title vignette, and many in-text illustrations, plus two additional plates on a different type of paper, with printed tissue guards. Front free endpaper with ownership inscription Frederick B. Adams Jr., noting that the book came from the library of Forsyth Wickes and was presented to him by Wickes' widow "as a memento of our long friendship." See: Benezit VII, p. 208-09; Olausson, "Claude Hoin--A Forgotten Polymath of L'Ancien Regime," Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Stockholm, Volume 28:2. Covers with a couple of trivial spots, front doublure and endleaf each with a small, light stain, but these issues quite minor and easily forgiven; added plates on different paper with faint traces of foxing, otherwise a very fine copy internally.
Owned by two important 20th century collectors, this is a very attractively bound and copiously illustrated study of the oeuvre of a talented but largely overlooked artist of the ancien régime. A pupil of the French artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Claude Hoin (1750-1817) was court painter to the comte de Provence (brother of Louis XVI), and worked in an impressive range of media, from pastels to engraving. Although Hoin never rose to the same heights as his teacher, or his close friend Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Benezit notes that he "showed unquestionable skill . . . [as] a miniaturist and pastel and gouache painter." And Olausson tells us that "Hoin showed the greatest originality . . . in his drawings and pastel paintings." Hoin's work is now owned by museums such as the Getty, the Met, and the National Museum of Art, as well as private collectors and numerous international institutions. The fine binding here adds considerably to the desirability of this volume. Pagnant, whose appearances among auction records indicate that he was at work during the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, has a produced a design here that is very elegant, and the work has been done with a high degree of skill. According to the inscription on the front free endpaper, the present copy was owned by Forsyth Wickes (1876-1974), a distinguished collector of French art, and then given to the bibliophile Frederick Baldwin Adams Jr. (1910-2001), whose long list of accomplishments includes being president of the Grolier Club and director of the Morgan Library after Belle da Costa Greene's retirement. Given the book's strictly limited press run, it is unsurprisingly quite rare in the marketplace. (ST19567-075)
Price: $1,250.00