The Vanity Fair Album, Second Series (London: Vanity Fair, [1871]). Small folio. Publisher’s binding VG+, tight. Contents near fine. $400

Vanity Fair, a weekly of news, politics, and society, only in its second year in 1870, was already a hit. Its most distinctive feature was the color lithographs of (mainly) men of the day, drawn in droll caricature first by Atn (Alfred Thompson) and then Spy (Leslie Ward). Ape (Carlo Pelligini) came later. This volume collects all 52 lithographs that appeared in the magazine in 1870, along with Jehu Junior’s pithy biographies that accompanied them when they initially appeared. Highlight caricatures in this volume include: Bismarck, Pius IX, Victor Emanuel of Italy, the Count Prince of Prussia, Judges Bovill and Pollock (the latter red robed), Sir Robert Peel, journalist Henri Rochefort, and man of letters Thomas Carlyle.  Bright and striking.

[Will Bradley] About Boys (New York: Rogers, Peet & Company, 1899) 12mo. VG, rebacked. Cover and contents profusely illustrated by Bradley. $250

By the turn of the century, Rogers, Peet & Company, founded in 1874, was a major clothier for males. In 1899, they commissioned Will Bradley, at that time with the University Press in Cambridge, MA, to design two sales books for them, one featuring men’s clothing and one featuring boys. The 56-page boys catalog features five full page two-color drawings by Bradley that illustrated nursery rhymes and many decorative flourishes. The catalog also features drawings by another hand of the products themselves. Classy and quaint. 

William Wall/John Hill. New York from the Heights Near Brooklyn and New York from Weehawken (New York: William Wall, 1823). Hand-colored aquatint engravings. Each 18.75” x 25.25”.  Backed with acid-free paper. Brooklyn is VG- with a light stain to the title bar and modest discoloration to the margins and sky. Weehawken is VG with modest discoloration to margins.  $5,000

This is a matching pair of separately issued Federal Period views of New York City, one from the east (the Heights near Brooklyn) and one from the west (Weehawken, New Jersey). Print historian Gloria Gilda Deák praises them as “two of the most beautiful views we have of New York City in the early nineteenth century.” Deák describes this print at length in her book Picturing America, a compendium of important prints in the New York Public Library collection. She cites a published account in 1823 that praised Wall’s view as “the most accurate description that we have seen” made from “the Mountain at Weehawk,” affording him a sweeping view of the city, its harbor and islands. Deák also provides this historical context:

William Guy Wall has given us matching views of New York much in the manner of two sides of the same coin. Here we view the city across the East River from the Heights near Brooklyn and, in the complementary view, the city from the Jersey side, looking across the Hudson River.  Both views are exceedingly well balanced, and both retain an eighteenth-century elegance in the clarity and fluid handling of the topographic projection, qualities enhanced by the skillful aquatinting of John Hill. Wall’s style is generically descended from that of the English artist Paul Sandby, a distinguished watercolorist who introduced the art of aquatint to England. 

William Guy Wall (1792-1864) was a watercolorist, landscape painter, and print publisher. Born and trained in art in Ireland, he emigrated to New York City in 1818, where he spent the next ten years. There he won wide recognition for his views of the City and the Hudson River. In addition to New York From Weehawk and New York from Heights near Brooklyn, he painted a set of twenty views, from New York City to successive vantage points along the Hudson River, engraved by John Hill and published in the Hudson River Portfolio (1821-1825). A founding member of the National Academy, he exhibited there and at the Pennsylvania Academy. He continued painting and exhibiting his work over the next several decades relocating several times between New England, New York State and Dublin, Ireland. 

John Hill (1770-1849) began his career as an aquatint engraver of landscapes in his native London, publishing a series of views after the paintings of J.M.W. Turner and others. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1816 and continued engraving for the next twenty years, first in Philadelphia and later in New York. His son and grandson, John William Hill and John Henry Hill, also became noted landscape painters.