London, Edward Orme, 1 January 1807-[25 March 1808]. . Landscape folio (45.5 x 55 cm); hand coloured aquatint title, list of plates with aquatint vignette, 20 hand-coloured, deckle-edged aquatint plates principally by W.M. Craig, J. Godby, and H. Merke after Howitt, plate captions in English and French, plates 2 and 9 with the printed overslips correcting the caption, and plate 2 with the letter 'x' added to 'cheveau' in manuscript, neat repairs to marginal tears on plates 10 and 20 and list plates, plates bound out of order, occasional faint spotting mainly confined to versoes of plates; contemporary straight-grained maroon morocco over marbled boards, red gilt label to upper cover, spine gilt ruled, extremities rubbed, a very good copy.
'Very rare. The first and only edition of the finest and most important sporting book of the last two centuries' (Schwerdt). Tooley calls it 'a magnificent work, the most valuable English colour plate book on sport'. Although there are fox, stag and hare hunting scenes, the majority of plates depict the shooting of different game birds in deeply rural woods and pastureland. The present copy contains the plates in an early state, printed on sheets watermarked 1804, 1805 or 1806 (Abbey records copies dated as late as 1819). The word 'chevau' in plate 2 has an 'x' added in pencil. A handsome copy with plates uncut.
Samuel Howitt (1756/71822) was an English painter, illustrator and etcher of animals, hunting, horse-racing and landscape scenes. He was closely associated in his art with Thomas Rowlandson, whose sister he married. Howitt's early watercolour style has similarities to Rowlandson's, but Howitt developed a more individual style as his career as a sporting artist progressed. He seems to have had an innate capacity for drawing animals, from commonplace hare and deer to exotic species that he studied in menageries. He was an animated draughtsman, and his drawings of hunts and sporting events have a fluidity and excitement fitting to the subject. (ODNB).
Edward Orme (17751848) was, after Rudolph Ackermann, the most important publisher of illustrated books during the short golden age of the coloured aquatint. Orme's output totalled some 700 illustrations, but his monument is his British Field Sports.
Abbey (Scenery), 14; Mellon/Podeschi 86; Schwerdt II, p. 53; Tooley 273.
