Our Notes & References

First edition of the best illustrated book on Saint-Petersburg, fully hand-coloured and here with generous margins in a luxury binding.

Published at six guineas coloured, this is a superb record of the city of Peter the Great – captured in the wake of the Napoleonic wars – and divided into two sections; the first 12 plates represent the months of the year through characteristic views of the city; the other eight illustrate different modes of transport, various types of sledges and carriages, but include excellent character studies, showing diverse types of costume by class and by season.

The 26-page introduction entitled “The present state of St. Petersburgh,” includes a brief historical survey and a few statistics, along with descriptions of the main sites and monuments. “Though unsigned, [the letterpress] was chiefly compiled from Robert Ker Porter’s Travelling Sketches [in Russia and Sweden during the years 1805–1808], as many sections repeat his text verbatim” (Giroud).

Mornay, the artist responsible for the original sketches upon which Clark and Dubourg’s aquatints were based, eludes identification and does not appear in Thieme-Becker’s extensive dictionary of artists. The French engraver Dubourg made these views public first in Paris in 1812 – the year of Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign: these were of larger format, but mostly (only?) black and white, with only 4 pp. of text and without the 8 sledge plates. They were reinterpreted in aquatint by both Dubourg and Clark for this edition.

Martin Hardie, in characteristically waspish fashion, describes the plates as “lurid in colouring, very much in the style of toy theatre scenery” (English Coloured Books, 1906, p. 138); this is rather unfair, with both the colouring and the “toy theatre” quality of the views only lending them a most appealing charm: many of the views are composed in such a way that they resemble vues d’optiques – symmetrical and theatrical middle-distance perspectives – which combine well with the small, scaling figures (staffage) adding splashes of bright colour, against backgrounds of snowy streets, grey skies, and yellowish-brown buildings of this “city of stone”, forming a satisfyingly picturesque effect.

Two of the buildings shown – the Exchange (1809) and the Kazan Cathedral (1811) – had only recently been completed. Other views include the Imperial Bank, the Marble Palace, the Square with the Grand Theatre, The Imperial Palace, and the Great Bridge.

Edward Orme – “Publisher to His Majesty and HRH the Prince Regent” – was “after Rudolph Ackermann, the most important publisher of illustrated books during the short golden age of the coloured aquatint” (ODNB). He would have had a prudent eye on the visit of the Allied sovereigns to London in June 1814, which celebrated the Treaty of Fontainebleau (11 April 1814) and the peace following the defeat and abdication of Napoleon. Amongst them was Tsar Alexander I (who stayed with his sister, the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg, at the Pulteney Hotel on Piccadilly). “In 1809 Edward Orme had begun buying land and property in Bayswater, London. He exploited the gravel deposits, built houses, and in 1818 added a chapel of ease. Orme Square, developed between 1823 and 1826, was named after him, and Moscow Road and St Petersburgh Place nearby may have commemorated the state visit of Tsar Alexander I in June 1814. In the following year he published a volume of twenty coloured aquatint views of St Petersburg, and the reference in his will to jewellery presented to him by the emperor of Russia may be connected with these events” (ibid.).

This is a lovely survey of one of the world’s great cities, captured at the time when it served as the backdrop for Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

Provenance

Unidentified aristocratic family, probably British (pink armorial bookplate with motto “Férir hault Parler bas” to upper pastedown).

Bibliography

Abbey Travel 226 (first issue 1815, same watermark for text; “no leaf carrying pages 29 and 30”); Bobins I-203; Cat. Russica P-604; Giroud, St. Petersburg: A Portrait of a Great City, 72; Martin Hardie, 138; Prideaux 345; Rovinskii Grav. I-285; Tooley (1954), 355. Not in Gubar, but cf. Gubar 2303 for the French 1812 version ‘Une Année de Saint-Pétersbourg ou douze vues pittoresques…”.