Album Comique de Pathologie Pittoresque

Paris: Chez Ambroise Tardieu, Editeur, 1823. Twenty Hand-Colored Lithographed Plates Depicting Caricatures of Various Diseases

AUBRY, Charles and others. Album Comique de Pathologie Pittoresque, Recueil de vingt caricatures médicales dessinées par Aubry, Chazal, Colin, Bellangé, et Pigal. Paris: Huzard-Courcier (for) Chez Ambrose Tardieu, 1823.

First edition of this exceptionally rare satirical album illustrating imagined personifications of medical ailments through grotesque and darkly humorous lithographs. A remarkable early contribution to medical caricature, bringing together leading illustrators of the period under the lithographic direction of Langlumé.

The diseases personified include gout, vapors, indigestion, colic, apoplexy, madness, St. Guy's dance (Sydenham's chorea), asthma, jaundice, smallpox, toothache, tic douloureux, migraine, and others, each portrayed with comic theatricality and richly detailed physiognomy.

Oblong folio (9 7/16 x 12 1/2 inches; 240 x 317 mm). [8, half-title, vignette title & Introduction], [40] pp. of text in double columns. Twenty hand-colored lithographed plates by Aubry, Chazal, Colin, Bellangé, et Pigal. Plates lithographed by Langlumé. Scattered foxing and browning. Tiny paper flaw (3/8 x 1/4 inch) to lower-margin of last plate. Each plate accompanied by two pages of text. Neat ink inscription on front free endpaper.

Publisher's dark red decorative paper over boards with hand-colored lithographed pictorial label (by Colin) on front cover depicting two men kneeling, each kissing a hand of an elegantly dressed female skeleton with a wide brim hat. At the feet of one man are open and stacked books; at the feet of the other man is a collection of bottles. A skull and crossbones are in a tree, and in the background are tombstones. Covers decoratively bordered in gilt, spine ruled and lettered in gilt. Spine expertly restored, some wear to extremities and corners. Overall, an excellent copy in the original binding. Housed in a fleece-lined quarter black morocco clamshell case, spine with five raised bands, decoratively tooled and lettered in gilt in compartments.

An extraordinary survival in its original publisher's pictorial binding-a true rarity of French satirical lithography and a visually arresting artifact of medical and artistic crosscurrents in Restoration-era France.

Not in Carteret; not in Colas or Grand-Carteret; OCLC locates only a handful of institutional holdings worldwide.

1. 'L'Apoplexie foudroyante' (Charles Aubry 1822)
2. 'L'Asthme,'
3. 'Le Cauchemar,' (Alexandre-Marie Colin)
4. 'La Colique,'
5. 'Les Cors aux Pieds,' (Edme-Jean Pigal)
6. 'La Courbature,' (Alexandre-Marie Colin)
7. 'La Danse de Saint Guy,'
8. 'Les Envies de Femmes Grosses,' (Edme-Jean Pigal)
9. 'La Folie,' (Charles Aubry)
10. 'La Gale,' (Hippolyte Bellangé)
11. ''La Goutte,' (Hippolyte Bellangé)
12. 'L'Indigestion,' (Charles Aubry)
13. 'La Jaunisse,' (Alexandre-Marie Colin)
14. 'Les Loupes,' (Edme-Jean Pigal)
15. 't,' (Charles Aubry)
16. 'La Migraine,'
17. 'La Petite Vérole,'
18. 'Les Tics,' (Edme-Jean Pigal)
19. 'Les Vapeurs,' (Alexandre-Marie Colin)
20. 'Le Ver Solitaire'

Charles Aubry (fl. 1817-1837). Charles Aubry was an early lithographic artist who made his reputation with hunting scenes and military subjects. In 1822 he accepted the post of professor of art at l'Ecole Militaire de Saumur. In 1823 he published Album Comique de Pathologie Pittoresque in which he wrote the forty pages of text and together with Antoine Chazal (1793-1854), Alexandre-Marie Colin (1798-1875), Edme-Jean Pigal (1798-1872) & Hippolyte Bellangé (1800-1866) made the illustrations for the twenty highly amusing lithographs. Listings from the records of the Restoration Salon indicates that Charles Aubry contributed one lithograph to the 1824 exhibition.

Norman Library 30.


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