Ah quel plaisir de voyager!

Paris: Maison Martinet / Hautecoeur Frères, 1860. Oh, What Fun To Travel! (Not)
In Twenty Hand Colored Lithographs

CHAM (pseudonym of Amédée de Noé). Ah quel plaisir de voyager! Paris: Maison Martinet / Hautecoeur Frères, n.d. [ca. 1860].

First edition. Folio (13 3/4 x 10 1/4 inches; 349 x 261 mm.). Hand colored pictorial lithographed title and twenty hand colored lithographed plates, with sixty-two humorous scenes with captions limning the downside to travel.

Publishers dark brown patterned cloth, front cover decoratively lettered in gilt, spine slightly faded. Pictorial title a little foxed in blank margins, otherwise clean. Extremities of spine and corners expertly restored, front free endpaper replaced. An excellent example of a rather scarce Cham title.

Only eight copies in institutional holdings worldwide. No copies have come to auction since ABPC began indexing results in 1923.

Of Amédée de Noé, "known as Cham (that is, Ham, the son of Noah)...it was said that he had ‘an idea a day' for Le charivari. A good proportion of his thousands of lithographs were gathered into albums. His contributions to the Album du siège (173), in which Daumier was his collaborator, are typical of his work" (Ray, pp. 155-156).

CHAM (pseudonym of Amédée de Noé) (1818-1879). French caricaturist and lithographer, published his first book Monsieur Lajeunesse in 1839 and from 1843 began to be regularly published in illustrated magazines such as Le Charivari (which in 1835 focused primarily on publishing satires of everyday life), thereafter becoming one of the most popular of French caricaturists through entertaining storybooks such as this work which satirized 'jokes in poor taste.'

Several artists "followed in the wake of Daumier and Gavarni. Among the most attractive of the former is Amédéé de Noé, "known as Cham (that is, Ham, the son of Noah)...it was said that he had ‘an idea a day' for Le charivari. A good proportion of his thousands of lithographs were gathered into albums. His contributions to the Album du siège (173), in which Daumier was his collaborator, are typical of his work" (Ray, pp. 155-156).

Cham had contacts with English artists, many of whom had trained on the Continent, most in company with English artist and follower of the pioneering German lithographer Alois Senefelder.