Amsterdam, Louis Renard, [1718-19]
Two parts in one vol, folio (405 x 250 mm), ff [8, without half-title to vol I], with titles in red and black, engraved arms of George I on dedication leaf, and 100 hand-coloured engraved plates (43 in first part, 57 in second part); a few plates with some restoration, very occasional light spotting, one with some marginal waterstaining, a fine, large copy in contemporary French red morocco, gilt fillets on sides, spines with gilt floral panels.
A VERY RARE AND ATTRACTIVE COPY OF THIS EXTRAORDINARY AND BEAUTIFUL WORK ON THE FISHES TO BE FOUND IN THE INDIAN OCEAN AND ARABIAN SEA.
First edition of the most beautiful and rarest of all illustrated fish books, with stunning, brilliantly coloured, and often bizarrely depicted images of tropical fish, crabs, and lobsters. This is the first fish book illustrated with colour plates, published in an edition of 100 copies only, of which only fourteen copies are recorded today. ‘The first edition . . . published in 1719 by Renard himself, is quite rare. Of the 100 copies originally printed, only fourteen are known, all but two held in European libraries’ (Pietsch).
The first volume contains 43 plates illustrating 227 fish, mostly naturalistic in execution. They were engraved after paintings made by Samuel Fallours for the governor of Amboina, Balthasar Coyett. They were brought from the Dutch East Indies to Amsterdam by the son of the governor and found their way to Renard.
The second volume contains 57 plates illustrating 241 fish, crabs, and other marine creatures of the Indian Ocean. These were engraved after paintings made at Ambon by
Samuel Fallours during the governorship of Adriaen van der Stel. Fallours brought them to Holland in 1715. It is the second volume particularly which has attracted interest and generated the renown of Renard’s publications, for the fish depicted often border on the surreal. However, despite Fallour’s artistic licence, evident in many fantastic images, ichthyologists have been able to identify the genus and often the species of almost all of them (with a few obvious exceptions such as the mermaid).. The colouring of the plates is brilliant and follows closely the originals. The work contains no text apart from the engraved descriptions on the plates themselves, but this text is quite extraordinary. Almost every fish is assessed in terms of edibility, and for many Fallours has given brief recipes, a feature virtually unique to zoological books of this period. For example, on plate 38, figure 170, Fallours writes: ‘On le fait secher, puis on le met rottir sur un gril dans du papier graissé de beure, et il a le gout approchant de celui des Cotelletes de Mouton’. Testimonials are given at the beginning of the work to the veracity of the illustrations, one of which cites the author François Valentijn to the effect that not only did he see the fish painted by Fallours in Amboina but also that he ate them on many occasions with Fallours!
Provenance: engraved bookplate of Frédéric-Jules, Malatou de Guernes on front pastedown
Landwehr 158; Nissen ZBI 3361; see Theodore W. Pietsch Fishes, Crayfishes, and Crabs. Louis Renard’s Natural History of the Rarest Curiosities of the Seas of the Indies, 1995, for a detailed account of the genesis of this work and for modern determinations of the images; NUC and OCLC list only the second edition of 1754
