Vischer, Edward:

$22,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

VISCHER'S PICTORIAL OF CALIFORNIA LANDSCAPE, TREES AND FOREST SCENES. GRAND FEATURES OF CALIFORNIA SCENERY, LIFE, TRAFFIC AND CUSTOMS. The John Howell-Kenneth Hill copy of what is likely a preliminary issue of Edward Vischer's album of photographs of his drawings of California landscape. This copy is complete as issued, containing all the plates called for in the general table of contents, but lacking the accompanying text volume except for three leaves that have been inserted along with the preliminary matter. It is unknown why this particular copy was assembled in this way, and we cannot locate any comparable copies, but Palmquist and Kailbourn note: "Vischer was perennially generous in distributing custom-assembled albums of his art, both original works and photographic reproductions." It is possible that it numbers among the twenty copies that Vischer initially sold by subscription, before offering an expanded version in a variety of formats.At the very least, this seems to be an early state of Vischer's PICTORIAL OF CALIFORNIA LANDSCAPE. Including a photographic map of California tipped-in to a blank preliminary leaf, this copy contains 115 mounted photographs, in the following groups: sixty numbered photographs arranged in five series, each preceded by a printed contents leaf; twenty-eight unnumbered plates preceded by a printed section-title, "Trees and Forest Scenes"; twenty-six unnumbered plates preceded by a printed section-title, "Supplement. Grand Features and Cha

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