Lot 386: BEAUHARNAIS, HORTENSE DE

LIVRE D'ART DE LA REINE HORTENSE, UNE VISITE A AUGSBOURG, ESQUISSE BIOGRAPHIQUE, LETTRES, DESSINS ET MUSIQUE, PARIS: HEUGEL & CIE, [C.1860] The de-luxe folio edition, 53 leaves (ff [4], 23 pages, ff.[37]), oblong folio (c.27 x 38cm), lithographed additional title: 'Album Artistique de la Reine Hortense' (bearing her arms), dedication to Napoleon III printed in gold, each page within a gilt border, lithographed portrait of Hortense, 7 chromo-lithographed decorative titles (one heightened in gold), texts variously printed in blue and in black, 6 plates lithographed after paintings by Hortense, 24 pages of music, contemporary velvet-covered green quarter morocco, gilt-stamped arms of Queen Hortense to covers, [Olivier 2654 (2)], extremities rubbed, foxing to the music, not affecting the plates, some staining to margins, lower hinge broken

Hirsch, iii 846

This is a splendid folio edition of the songs, drawings and letters of Hortense, formerly Queen of Holland. She was the daughter of the Empress Josephine and mother to Napoleon III, to whom the volume is dedicated. The work was originally published in oblong quarto format in 1853, edited by Comte Auguste Louis Charles de la Garde-Chambonas (1783-1853). We have not traced a copy of this de-luxe edition at auction, nor even in the Bibliothèque Nationale.