Chants et chansons populaires de la France - Chansons populaires des Provinces de France

First edition of this celebrated illustrated publication, issued in Paris by H.-L. Delloye in 84 parts between February 1842 and October 1843 and subsequently gathered into three volumes. Carteret described it as an “admirable publication printed on stout wove paper [...] one of the finest of the 19th century”, comparing the quality of its production to that of the great illustrated books of the 18th century. Carteret III, 143-153; Vicaire II, 234-248.

The first volume comprises 5 unnumbered leaves - half-title, engraved title-frontispiece, list of songs, and Delloye's introduction - followed by 28 parts; the second, 5 unnumbered leaves and 27 parts, including the substantial sequence devoted to La Parodie de la Vestale; the third, 5 unnumbered leaves and 28 parts. Each part combines a notice, illustrated text, and music. The general series wrappers were not bound into this copy, which nevertheless retains several points associated with the first issue.

The three volumes are bound in full purple morocco of the second half of the 19th century, signed Dunezat. Spines with five raised bands outlined with gilt dots, richly gilt double compartments, gilt rolls at head and foot, covers framed with a quintuple gilt fillet and with the gilt monogram MG at the corners, comb-marbled endpapers and pastedowns within gilt dentelle borders, double gilt fillets to board edges, all edges gilt.

Joined to these is the true fourth volume of the series, Chansons populaires des provinces de France, published in Paris by Lécrivain et Toubon in 1860, with notices by Champfleury and piano accompaniments by J.-B. Weckerlin. Two unnumbered leaves, engraved frontispiece, XXIV and 224 pp. It is bound in half purple morocco with corners, closely matching the decorative style of the first three volumes, with five raised bands and richly gilt compartments, all edges gilt; unsigned, but attributable to Dunezat.

The first three volumes rank among the finest Romantic illustrated books devoted to French song. Texts by Désaugiers, Fabre d'Églantine, Béranger, André Chénier, Florian, Sedaine, Constance de Salm, and Vadé are accompanied by music including works by Grétry, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Méhul, and Boieldieu; the illustrations were entrusted to a generation of artists including Charles-François Daubigny, Ernest Meissonier, Louis-Joseph Trimolet, Adolphe Steinheil, Gustave Staal, Emy, Louis-Léopold Boilly, and Charles-Édouard de Beaumont.

The participation of Daubigny and Meissonier gives the publication particular interest today. Daubigny was only about twenty-five when publication began, and Meissonier twenty-seven; both were still at the outset of careers that would place them among the major figures of 19th-century French art. Daubigny would become one of the great renovators of landscape painting before Impressionism, while Meissonier achieved immense fame under the Second Empire. Here, however, both still belong to the world of Romantic book illustration, before their mature careers unfolded on canvas.

The fourth volume of 1860 carries the undertaking into a markedly different intellectual climate. Champfleury, by then one of the principal advocates of Realism and closely associated with Courbet, turned his attention to the sung traditions of the French provinces; Weckerlin, later librarian of the Paris Conservatoire, arranged and harmonised the melodies in a manner anticipating the major later projects devoted to the collection and study of French popular song. The illustrations themselves reflect a new generation, notably through the participation of Bracquemond and Courbet.

Bound in a closely unified decorative style, the four volumes thus present two successive moments in the French fascination with popular song: first the great Romantic illustrated book of the 1840s, shaped in part by young artists such as Daubigny and Meissonier, and then, with Champfleury and Weckerlin in 1860, a more deliberate engagement with regional memory and musical heritage.