May 18, 2016 - Sale 2416

Sale 2416 - Lot 342

Price Realized: $ 4,160
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(ROWLANDSON, THOMAS.) [Combe, William.] The English Dance of Death. 2 volumes * The English Dance of Life. Together, 3 volumes, with a total of 100 hand-colored aquatint plates by Rowlandson, including frontispieces and pictorial additional titles. Large 8vo, 234x143 mm, later 19th-century navy morocco gilt by Tout with triple-fillet border and floral cornerpieces on covers, spines in 6 compartments, lettered in 2 with ornamental tooling in the rest, decorated paper endleaves; contents generally quite clean and almost entirely free of offsetting from the plates; gilt edges. Bookplates of Julius Thompson Benedict and Cecile Murphy Benedict. London: R. Ackermann, 1814-16; 1817

Additional Details

handsomely bound first editions in book form of Rowlandson's Dance of Death, "the only series on the subject since Holbein's to rival that master" (Ray), and its less morbid sequel. Volume 1 of the first work contains the serial issue letterpress title page dated 1814 in addition to the book issue title dated 1815. Abbey Life 263-64; Tooley 410-11; Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England 35.