"3 volumes in-folio (42 x 27 cm). With 3 portraits (Claude Le Lorrain by Boydell, John Boydell by Smith, and Earlom by Lipton) and first state of 300 sepia mezzotint and aquatint plates by Earlom after Claude Lorrain. Some marginal foxing. The plates of Volumes I and II are sepia mezzotints. In Volume III most plates are sepia mezzotints, some combine mezzotint and aquatint; others are aquatint only; others, soft-ground etchings. Contemporary binding in Russian leather, rebacked, all edges gilt, boards and corners used, gilt frame around the boards"
"Provenance : WILLIAM BECKFORD. Ref. Cohen 242 : ""un bel exemplaire [...] payé 3,025 fr. à la vente Beckford"" ""A landmark in the history of reproductions of master drawings, is included in this catalogue as an important forerunner of later publications in this section. It contains 300 reproductions of drawings by Claude Lorrain, pastoral, mythological, and biblical subjects. They are all printed in warm bistre colour to aid the resemblance"" (Abbey, Life in England in aquatint and lithography, 200) This publication is an expression of the enduring admiration for Claude's landscape paintings and of the eighteenth-century interest in drawings for their own sake."
