Pictures in the Collection of J. Pierpont Morgan at the Princes Gate and Dover House, London.
London: Privately Printed, 1907. First Edition. Three volumes. Atlas folio, 21 3/8 X 17 1/8 inches (542 x 435 mm), 363 pages, printed on Dutch Van Gelder paper with three color frontispieces and 97 collotype plates; captioned guards. Bound by Zaehnsdorf of London in contemporary chestnut morocco, richly gilt, watered silk endpapers, turn-ins elaborately gilt with dentelle decoration, top edges gilt, rest uncut; hand-sewn headbands. Scattered foxing to preliminaries and occasional browning to a few leaves; light rubbing to spine edges and detached piece of silk on front endpaper. The color reproductions used as frontispiece in each of the volumes were executed in Paris by Goupil et Cie.
Volume I: Dutch, Flemish, French, Italian and Spanish
Volume II: Modern Schools
Volume III: English School
Extras: two photographic reproductions of paintings from the Wallace collection, loosely inserted in Volume III
Provenance: from the library of Gayfryd Steinberg
NOTE: Because of the massive size and weight of these books, extra shipping and packing charges will be required; the amount to be determined at the time of shipment.
A sumptuous privately printed catalogue documenting the celebrated art collection of J. Pierpont Morgan, recording the paintings displayed in his London residences at Princes Gate and Dover House before much of the collection was later dispersed, transferred, or donated to public institutions. Produced on an extraordinary scale, the work combines an art-historical introduction by T. Humphry Ward with detailed biographical and provenance notes by W. Roberts.
Issued as an ultra-luxury atlas folio and privately printed for Morgan’s inner circle, museums, and select libraries, the set represents one of the great achievements of early twentieth-century art publishing. The volumes are illustrated throughout with finely executed collotype and photogravure reproductions protected by captioned tissue guards, designed to capture the texture and tonal richness of the original paintings. Complete copies in the original gilt morocco bindings by Zaehnsdorf are increasingly scarce on the market.
The catalogue is divided by artistic schools and collecting interests. The English School volume records Morgan’s admiration for British portraiture and landscape painting, including works by Thomas Gainsborough, Sir Joshua Reynolds, George Romney, John Constable, and John Hoppner. The Continental schools volume surveys Old Master paintings by artists such as Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Anthony van Dyck, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Diego Velázquez, and Hans Holbein the Younger, while the Modern Schools volume reflects Morgan’s later acquisitions of nineteenth-century and contemporary academic art.
The title itself commemorates Morgan’s London residences at Princes Gate and Dover House, where the collection was displayed in lavish domestic settings. Morgan expanded the Princes Gate property into a private museum to house his growing collection, in part to avoid the substantial American import tariffs on art in force before 1909. Dover House served both as a country residence and as a gathering place for family, aristocrats, and connoisseurs during the height of Morgan’s collecting activity.
Condition: Near fine.
Item number: 2736
Price: $8,000.00
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