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IN A BEAUTIFUL CONTEMPORARY HAND-COLOURING
DUHAMEL DU MONCEAU, Henri-Louis. Traité des arbres fruitiers; contenant leur figure, leur description, leur culture, &c.
Paris, Saillant Desaint, 1768. Royal 4to (32.5 x 25 cm). Two title-pages, two half-titles, full-page engraved frontispiece, 180 full-page engraved plates, depicting various types of fruits, woodcut head- and tailpieces, all in a beautiful contemporary hand-colouring. Contemporary marbled calf, gilt fillets along border, spine with raised bands, richly gilt compartments, with gilt-stamped name and title, marbled pastedowns and endleaves, blue speckled edges.
| Orders and Information | € 41000 |
First edition of Duhamel du Monceau's famous book on fruit trees, one of the very rare copies with the plates magnificently coloured.
Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau (1700-1782), an eighteenth-century polymath and prolific author, became intrigued by the agricultural revival in England in the beginning of the eighteenth century. He not only translated Jethro Tull's landmark work Horse-Hoeing Husbandry (1733), but, based on his own studies in agriculture and his practical knowledge and original experiments as a landowner, he also adapted Tull's findings to the French situation in Traité de la culture des terres (1750). He continued to publish on agronomic subjects, including in his works "ideas as well as simple techniques" (DSB ).
The present work embodies Duhamel du Monceau's practical knowledge and theory on fruit trees. He opens with general instructions on the cultivation of fruit trees and other fruit plants, and discusses suitable plots, the work for each season, grafting, trelliswork, pruning, illnesses, natural enemies, and the preservation of fruit. There are two engraved plates on grafting and pruning. He then proceeds with a chapter on each of the following species, accompanied by engraved plates, almond (four plates), apricot (six plates), common barberry (one plate), cherry (sixteen plates), the peachlike Cydonia (one plate), fig (two plates), strawberry (nine plates), red currant and gooseberry (two plates), apple (fourteen plates), medlar (four plates) and blackberry (one plate). The second volume deals with the peach (thirty-two plates), plum (twenty plates), pear (fifty-eight plates), raspberry (one plate), and the grape (seven plates). The frontispiece, showing a man and a woman harvesting pears, is by De Sève.
Some browning and light foxing throughout; a well preserved copy with beautifully coloured plates of this classic work on fruit trees.
*Jointly offer for sale by ASHER Rare Books and Antiquariaat FORUM.
