Ce qu'on dit et ce qu'on pense: Petites Scenes du Monde

Set of 36 handcoloured lithographs after satirical illustrations by Jean-Gabriel Scheffer from What one says and what one thinks, Little Scenes of the World.

An album of rare lithographs that depict comical scenes of daily life in Paris during the reign of King Charles X, in the Restoration era. Women in the voluminous puff-sleeved dresses and bonnets of the time, the men in elegant jackets and pants, lounging in restaurants, cafes, libraries, gardens and galleries.

With title page and 36 hand-coloured plates lithographed and printed by Gihaut Frères in Paris (last six plates printed by Charles Tilt, London).

These delightful satirical scenes mock the hypocrisies and annoyances of bourgeois society, in the same way as Thomas Rowlandson depicted the Miseries of Human Life in Regency England. The captions show what the characters say on the left, and what they really think on the right. Women flatter Plain Janes and ugly men, men flatter ugly women, a widow takes a new lover before her husband's gravestone is finished, a spinster wonders how many arts she must master and remain single, a gentlemen tries to snare a rich old dame, two mothers compare their sons, etc.

Among the anonymous people depicted there is one celebrity: the composer Rossini flatters a young man about his musical talents when he is really thinking of a musical phrase from the libretto of La Cenerentola (Cinderella).

Jean-Gabriel Scheffer (1797-1876) was a genre painter and lithographer from Geneva who trained in Paris at the studio of Jean-Baptiste Regnault. He also published Recueil de Scenes Familieres et de Societe de Paris (1824), Recueil de Cinquante Scenes de Grisetes (1824), Les Jeux de l'Enfance (1824), and Diable boîteux à Paris (1830).

Oblong folio with red leather gilt spine, red morocco boards slightly worn at edges, blue paper title page with vignette, endpapers with some spotting, but all prints in very good condition with superb hand-colour. One plate No. 2 with brown shadow from a bookmark in corner, but well outside plate-mark.

Very good set of this rare collection of elegant Parisian satires.