Les Modes Parisiennes sous le Directoire: apres Moreau

Very good copy of Compte-Calix's suite of fashion plates of the French Directory era

Complete with all 15 very finely handcoloured fashion plates, 13 belles and two dandies

The women dressed in bonnets and gowns decorated with frills, bows and ribbons, a few Merveilleuses in Roman style robes. The gentlemen, or Royalist Incroyables, in tricorne or top hat, riding coat, gilet, breeches and boots, armed with cudgels.

All the plates drawn by Francois Claudius Compte-Calix, an artist who worked for the weekly fashion magazine Modes Parisiennes

Based on contemporary illustrations by Jean Michel Moreau le Jeune, the French draftsman, illustrator and engraver whose career spanned the last years of the Ancien Regime and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras.

Finely engraved on steel by E. Bracquet, A. Carrache and Paul Lacourriere and very finely hand-coloured

With two-page explanation of the costumes bound in at rear

François-Claudius Compte-Calix (1813–1880) was a French genre painter and fashion illustrator. He first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1840, and later in the International Exhibition at Paris in 1867. He provided fashion plates for the weekly fashion magazine Modes Parisiennes in the 1850s and 1860s, and also illustrated many albums of historical and regional fashions in special suites also published by the magazine entitled Musée de Costumes (Costume Museum) 1850, Directoire (Directory) 1851, Cour de France depuis Charles VII jusqu'a nos jours (French Court of Charles VII to our Times) 1861, Travestissements Elégants (Fancy Dress) 1864, L'époque de Luis XVI (Era of Louis XVI) 1869, etc.

In brown blindstamped cloth binding, gilt title on front board Les Modes Parisiennes sous le Directoire, spine frayed, boards rubbed, endpapers spotted, all plates under tissue guards with vivid handcolour.