A New Drawing Book of Modes. By Mons. B. Picart.
London: Printed for Richard Ware at the Bible & Sun in Amen Corner Warwick-Lane, [1732-33]. Item #1000 First edition of this drawing manual offering designs of hairstyles, costumes, and attitudes by the noted French artists and engraver, Bernard Picart. The title of the work is engraved within a rococo style shell and floral vignette and although unsigned is no doubt a design used by Picart in many of his works. The twelve plates offer the art student Picart’s sense of how to draw the hands, heads, hair, and wardrobes of fashionable people in the first part of the 18th century. The plates are both stylish and suggestive for composition as well as contours and lines. John Lea Nevinson was the founder of the British Costume Society and a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum. A penciled note in his hand appears on the rear flyleaf and reads, “ A later edition of this series, partly signed (and reengraved?) by B. Cole is numbered outside the ruled lines of each plate. Numbers added in pencil.” The four signed plates in the series are signed by George Bickham and George Bickham Jr. and dated 1732. A very scarce title in near fine condition.
8vo. 205 x 140 mm., [8 ¼ x 5 ½ inches]. Engraved title-page and 12 engraved plates. Bound in later decorated paper boards. With a typed paper label identifying this copy as “Nevinson Loan 1979 No. 18,” on the front pastedown; pencil ownership inscription of costume historian J. L. Nevison dated 1959 on front free endpaper, Penciled numbers and occasional smudges to margins of the plates.
Price: $1,200.00