Doughty, John and Thomas Doughty | The Laird U. Park, Jr. copy of "the first colored-plate sporting book printed in America"

Doughty, John and Thomas Doughty

The Cabinet of Natural History and Rural Sports. Philadelphia: J & T Doughty, 1830-1833

3 volumes in 2, 4to (281 x 229 mm). Engraved frontispiece of Charles Willson Peale by J. B. Longacre after Rembrandt Peale, engraved frontispiece of William Bartram in vol. 2, engraved pictorial title-pages, 54 handcolored lithographed plates, two uncolored engraved plates (pl. 5 in vol. 2 and pl. 7 in vol. 3), all plates in vol. 1 after Thomas Doughty and by various artists in vols. 2 and 3, numerous wood-engraved text illustrations; marginal chips and tears, some of which repaired, foxing and browning especially to text leaves. In half brown morocco over marbled boards, spines with raised bands in 6 compartments, second and fourth lettered in gilt; rubbed and worn. Both volumes housed in a custom quarter brown morocco slipcase with folding chemises.

First edition of "the first colored-plate sporting book printed in America" (Henderson). It was also essentially the first book issued in America with handcolored lithographed plates, heralding in an era of printmaking dominated by that process. Published in monthly parts, the Cabinet contains a farrago of information on contemporary sport and natural history. Publication of the rare third volume, which has here been bound in with the second, was suspended after the fourth number—perhaps because subscribers did not respond well to the artists who replaced the Hudson River School artist Thomas Doughty, who had left the Cabinet to pursue his career as a landscape painter.

REFERENCE:

Bennett 35; Gee 132; Henderson Early American Sport 40; Howes D433; Phillips 69; Reese American Color Plate Books 12

PROVENANCE:

Thomas B. Wilson (bookplates) — Laird U. Park, Jr. (his sale, Sotheby's New York, 29 November 2000, lot 79)