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DUHAMEL DU MONCEAU, Henri-Louis (1700-1782). Traité des arbres fruitiers; contenant leur figure, leur description, leur culture, &c. Paris: L.F.Delatour for Saillant and Desaint, 1768.
DUHAMEL DU MONCEAU, Henri-Louis (1700-1782). Traité des arbres fruitiers; contenant leur figure, leur description, leur culture, &c. Paris: L.F.Delatour for Saillant and Desaint, 1768. 2 volumes, 4 o (327 x 246 mm). Half-titles. Engraved emblematic frontispiece in volume one by N. de Launay after De Seve, 180 ENGRAVED PLATES, ALL HAND-COLORED IN A CONTEMPORARY HAND, by Martinet, Tardieu, Mesnil and others after Claude Aubriet Madeleine Françoise Basseporte and Louis René le Berriays. (Small hole in C3 affecting pagination, plate VI p. 322 with marginal discoloring, some browning and light marginal dampstaining.) Contemporary olive morocco gilt, spines in six compartments each with two gilt-lettered red morocco spine labels, by Derome le jeune. (Even fading to spine, light fading to sides.) Provenance : Olivetti Salvatore (presentation inscription "Turin, 1863"); acquired from Goodspeed's Book Shop, 1976. FIRST EDITION, AND ONE OF VERY FEW HAND-COLORED COPIES OF ONE OF THE GREAT 18TH-CENTURY POMONAS. The plates are colored using watercolor and gouache to a very high standard and with a realism which would suggest access to the original drawings. Claude Aubriet (d.1742) was Nicolas Robert's successor as dessinateur du roi for the collection des vélins, and he was succeded in his turn by his pupil Madeleine Basseporte (1701-1780). The Abbé le Berriays (credited only by the initials "L.B.") was the third artist and also assisted Duhamel with the text. Duhamel, a polymath in the great 18th-century tradition, demonstrated his interest in fruit as early as 1728 when he published Recherches sur les causes de la multiplication des espèces de fruits (Paris), followed shortly by his Anatomie de la Poire (Paris, 1730-1731). He employed Aubriet and Basseporte making drawings of various fruit cultivars, apparently with a view to publication, but the lack of the funds necessary to produce the engravings eventually led him to delay the project. It was resurrected twenty years later at the urging of le Berriays, with whose help the present work was eventually published in the 1768. Duhamel was a passionate advocate of fruit ("Je n'ai garde cependant de conseiller tout le monde indistinctement de manger de toutes sortes de fruits"), he dismisses contemporary opinion that fruit could adversely affect health, and presents the work as a practical manual intended to aid the spread of both the cultivation and consumption of fruit. His earlier interest in pears is demonstrated by the subjects of the plates: 58 of pears; 32 of peaches; 20 of plums; 16 of cherries; 14 of apples. Other fruits include almonds, apricots and strawberries. Dunthorne 109; Great Flower Books p.55; Nissen BBI 550; Raphael. An Oak Spring Pomona 28; Stafleu and Cowan 1546 (all references to uncolored copies, apart from Oak Spring). (2)