French Hunting Dress, Pair of Antique Hand Colored Prints, circa 1882

This is a set of two original antique hand-colored wood engravings, sold together as one lot, from Augustin Challamel's La France et les Francais a travers les siecles, Paris, circa 1882. The sheets are, in order: Huntsman of the 16th Century after Chevignard; Gentleman in Hunting Dress of the 18th Century. A huntsman of the sixteenth century in a short belted coat and high boots with a horn slung across his body and a hunting sword at his hip, drawn after Lechevalier-Chevignard. A gentleman in eighteenth century hunting dress, a plain skirted coat and waistcoat with high boots and a tricorne, a gun under his arm and a dog at his heel, engraved by Petit.

The engraving comes from the costume suite of Augustin Challamel's La France et les Francais a travers les siecles, F. Roy, editeur, Paris, circa 1882. Almost every plate in the series cites its source in the caption, a miniature in the Bibliotheque nationale, a tapestry, a picture in the Louvre or a sheet from the Gaignieres collection, and that habit of citation is what lifts the series above the invented costume books of the same decade. The technique is wood engraving, cut on the end grain so that the block could be locked up with the type and printed together with the text, and the color is applied by hand afterwards over the printed line. The washes in this suite are flat and confident, laid in a small number of strong tones, and they cross the engraved outline here and there in the way that only hand work does.

The chase was the organizing ritual of noble life and its servants had their own livery, which this plate records in detail down to the shape of the horn and the cut of the boot. Hunting dress was the first properly functional male clothing of the eighteenth century and the direct ancestor of the riding coat and the modern jacket, which gives this quiet plate a real place in costume history. They are two original sheets sold together, and the set is never split. Framed as a set in plain wood or in gilt, the sheets give a hallway, a study or a dining room a deliberate and finished line that a single print cannot.

Light uneven toning, browner toward the edges. Marked handling soiling along the edges of both sheets. Light foxing in the margins of both sheets. Slight wear at the corners of both sheets.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.