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POETRY EXEMPLIFYING DUTCH 19TH CEN. HIGH SOCIETY CULTURE
LITHOGRAPHS BY DESGUERROIS & LAVISH GOLD-TOOLED MOROCCO
BOGAERS, Adrianus. Jochébed. Dichtstuk.
Amsterdam, C.A. Spin, 1835. Large 8vo (24 x 15.5 cm). With 7 lithographed Old Testament illustrations by Desguerrois & Co., separately printed on fine "China" paper and mounted in the spaces left for that purpose. Contemporary grained red morocco, gold-tooled boards (each with a frame of flowers around a lyre), dark blue watered-silk doublures, the silk edged with gold foil and the turn-ins and hinge gold-tooled with a grape-vine frame, gilt edges.
| Orders and Information | € 475 |
First edition of a forty-page poem by Bogaers on the biblical story of Jochébed (Jochabed, Yochebed), Moses's mother, with a six-page dedicatory poem to the author's mother, a fourteen-page poem about Moses and nine pages of notes. A lithograph on the title-page shows Jochébed holding Moses for the last time with her basket next to her before floating him down the Nile, five more illustrating her life appear in the text of the main poem and another of the tablets with the ten commandments at the end of the Moses poem. A revised edition appeared at Haarlem in 1861. All were printed by Desguerrois & Co in Amsterdam, and most bear the artist's initial M (or possily monogramme CM). Jochébed, one of Adrianus Bogaers's best known works, was first publicly presented in 1822 when he recited it at the "Hollandsche Maatschappij van Fraaie Kunsten en Wetenschappen." It serves as a perfect example of the Dutch high society culture that flourished in the nineteenth century.
The text gives the biblical story of Jochébed (mother of Aaron, Moses, and Miriam, and wife of Amram) who saved Moses by floating him down the Nile in a small papyrus basket. In the lengthy notes at the end, Bogaers cites and even extensively quotes recent scholarly archaeological, botanical and other research by Ippolito Rossellini, the late Jean-François Champollion (whose premature death in 1832 he laments), and other Dutch and foreign scholars.
Adrianus Bogaers (1795-1870), was a Dutch jurist and a man of letters best known for his Woordenboek op de Dichterwerken van W. Bilderijk (Dictionary of Willem Bilderdijk's poetry), and was very active in various literary societies.
Fine copy, with only a minor spot in the empty background of one illustration. Binding very good, with only very slight wear to the hinge and edges. A fine copy of the first edition of Bogaers' Jochébed, with 7 lithographed illustrations, in a deluxe binding eminently suited to the content.
