30 LARGE HAND-COLORED LITHOGRAPHS BY CHAM

CHAM (pseudonym of NOÉ, Charles Amédée de). A la Guerre comme a la Guerre. BOUND WITH: Le Grand Magasin d’Images (bound first). Paris: Aubert, circa 1880. Oblong quarto, contemporary half green calf gilt, marbled boards and endpapers. $2750.

First edition of this suite of 30 full-page hand-colored lithographs of Cham caricatures documenting the French colonization of North Africa, bound with an intriguing publication of 790 French magazine illustrations.

Cham saw a career that would result in over 40,000 drawings, many of them caricatures and sketches of French and Algerian life. In 1843 he began to contribute to such newspapers as Le Charivari, whose staff he eventually joined and remained for 30 years. These are Cham’s parodies of war scenes (apparently from the French colonies in North Africa), 30 hand-colored lithographs similar to those he produced for the Album du Siège (Charivari, 1870)— in collaboration with Honoré Daumier. “Cham embued stories [in Le Charivari] with the comic force of his caricatures… These, in the future, will remain when the fleeting stories are forgotten: the day after the stew evaporates and salt escapes us. People who have seen Cham’s images will always remember the huge success of the cartoonist” (Henri Beraldi). Bound with this is an ingenious publication of 790 small in-text wood-engravings, produced by various engravers and appearing at different times in French magazines, around which is woven a clever story line about the travels and adventures of the Lacroix family, written to match the diverse engravings.

Minor spotting to margins of a few plates (not affecting images),light expert restoration to contemporary binding. Extremely good condition.