Apr 11, 2025 10:00 EST
Rare Books, Autographs & Maps
305
The Latin Grammar of Toulouse-Lautrec, illustrated with hundreds of small drawings
[TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, HENRI DE]
GEOFFROY, J. Nouveau Dictionnaire Éleméntaire. Latin-Français. Paris: Jules Delalain et Fils, 1873. The copy of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, was used by him while studying for his baccalaureate. Contemporary drab buckram, inscribed on the cover: "H. de Toulouse-Lautrec. Dictionnaire Latin | T.L"; housed in a modern pigskin case. 8 5/8 x 5 1/2 inches (22 x 14 cm); viii, 534 pp.; with roughly 440 pen-and-ink drawings by Lautrec on approximately 110 pages, including the endpapers, title-page, and the margins of text pages, executed about 1878-81. Rebacked, resewn, the hinges neatly restored along the gutter of the endpapers; one or two minor tears, small, neat repairs to a few leaves.
Toulouse-Lautrec's Latin-French dictionary is enhanced with hundreds of delicate pen and ink drawings, drawn while he studied for his baccalauréat. The sixteen-year-old first sat for the exam, for which a working knowledge of Latin was an essential and integral part, in 1880. After initially failing, he retook it in 1881, and this time he passed. During his studies, the young artist decorated the margins of his dictionary with sketches, many of which demonstrate skills reaching far beyond the doodles of a bored schoolboy. Toulouse-Lautrec was already studying art, having received informal instruction from Charles de Toulouse-Lautrec, his uncle, and (from a young age) the painter René Princeteau, a friend of his father. Princeteau, a brilliant painter of animals, especially horses, was the subject of at least two 1881 paintings by Henri.
Horses were a lifelong passion for Toulouse-Lautrec, and his diminutive stature may have resulted (at least in part) from two bad falls (with resulting broken legs) he took while riding while still a young man. Many of his earliest paintings feature them (his powerful work The White Horse "Gazelle" was painted in 1881, around the time he made the drawings here) and they remained an enduring fascination, and a source of some of his most compelling images, throughout his brief life. The playful sketches that populate these pages include many lively, compelling drawings of the animals, and it is these, perhaps more than any other theme, that draw the eye. Writing about this book in 1955, Aldous Huxley observed "... when the learned foolery of grammar and versification became unbearable, he would ... dip his pen in the ink and draw a tiny masterpiece. Dictionnaire Latin-Français. Above the words is a cavalryman galloping to the left, a jockey walking his horse towards the right. Coetus and Cohaerentia are topped by a pair of horse's hoofs, glimpsed from the back as the animal canters past. Two pages of the preface are made beautiful, the first by an unusually large drawing of a tired old nag, the second by a no less powerful version of the three horses in tandem which adorned the flyleaf." On the front pastedown, two quatrains in Toulouse-Lautrec's elegant script appear among the drawings. The first reads "Si tente de demon, Tu derobes ce livre, Apprends que tout fripon, Est indigne à vivre" (If, driven by a demon, you steal this book, know that no rascal merits to live); a second verse, written in alternating Latin and French, appears below a drawing of a pierrot hanged on a gallows, saluted by a dapper gentleman in a top hat. Translated, the verse reads, "Look at Pierrot hanged, who did not return the book; if he returned it, he would not have been hanged."
This is believed to be the only surviving school book thus decorated by the youthful Toulouse-Lautrec. Huxley wrote glowingly of it: "Even as a boy, as yet completely ignorant of the masters under whose influence his mature style was to be formed, Houku-sai, Degas, Goya, even in the margins of his Latin dictionary he was making manifest the vitalizing spirit in the movements of life."
Literature:
A. Huxley, "Toulouse-Lautrec: Reality Revisited with the Amoral Eye", Esquire, September 1955
Centenaire de Toulouse-Lautrec, J. Bouchot-Saupique, Albi, Palais de la Berbie, 1964
Paris, Réunion des musées nationaux, 1964
La Revue du Louvre et des musées de France, vol. 26, 1976, p. 453, no. 20.
Provenance:
Jake Zeitlin, c.f. the Huxley article cited above
Sale: Geneva, June 13-15, 1960, lot 539
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, December 11, 1990, lot 481, sold $165,000
Jay I. Kislak, United States
The Comité Toulouse-Lautrec has confirmed the authenticity of this work
Sold for $70,350
Estimated at $15,000 - $25,000
Includes Buyer's Premium
[TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, HENRI DE]
GEOFFROY, J. Nouveau Dictionnaire Éleméntaire. Latin-Français. Paris: Jules Delalain et Fils, 1873. The copy of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, was used by him while studying for his baccalaureate. Contemporary drab buckram, inscribed on the cover: "H. de Toulouse-Lautrec. Dictionnaire Latin | T.L"; housed in a modern pigskin case. 8 5/8 x 5 1/2 inches (22 x 14 cm); viii, 534 pp.; with roughly 440 pen-and-ink drawings by Lautrec on approximately 110 pages, including the endpapers, title-page, and the margins of text pages, executed about 1878-81. Rebacked, resewn, the hinges neatly restored along the gutter of the endpapers; one or two minor tears, small, neat repairs to a few leaves.
Toulouse-Lautrec's Latin-French dictionary is enhanced with hundreds of delicate pen and ink drawings, drawn while he studied for his baccalauréat. The sixteen-year-old first sat for the exam, for which a working knowledge of Latin was an essential and integral part, in 1880. After initially failing, he retook it in 1881, and this time he passed. During his studies, the young artist decorated the margins of his dictionary with sketches, many of which demonstrate skills reaching far beyond the doodles of a bored schoolboy. Toulouse-Lautrec was already studying art, having received informal instruction from Charles de Toulouse-Lautrec, his uncle, and (from a young age) the painter René Princeteau, a friend of his father. Princeteau, a brilliant painter of animals, especially horses, was the subject of at least two 1881 paintings by Henri.
Horses were a lifelong passion for Toulouse-Lautrec, and his diminutive stature may have resulted (at least in part) from two bad falls (with resulting broken legs) he took while riding while still a young man. Many of his earliest paintings feature them (his powerful work The White Horse "Gazelle" was painted in 1881, around the time he made the drawings here) and they remained an enduring fascination, and a source of some of his most compelling images, throughout his brief life. The playful sketches that populate these pages include many lively, compelling drawings of the animals, and it is these, perhaps more than any other theme, that draw the eye. Writing about this book in 1955, Aldous Huxley observed "... when the learned foolery of grammar and versification became unbearable, he would ... dip his pen in the ink and draw a tiny masterpiece. Dictionnaire Latin-Français. Above the words is a cavalryman galloping to the left, a jockey walking his horse towards the right. Coetus and Cohaerentia are topped by a pair of horse's hoofs, glimpsed from the back as the animal canters past. Two pages of the preface are made beautiful, the first by an unusually large drawing of a tired old nag, the second by a no less powerful version of the three horses in tandem which adorned the flyleaf." On the front pastedown, two quatrains in Toulouse-Lautrec's elegant script appear among the drawings. The first reads "Si tente de demon, Tu derobes ce livre, Apprends que tout fripon, Est indigne à vivre" (If, driven by a demon, you steal this book, know that no rascal merits to live); a second verse, written in alternating Latin and French, appears below a drawing of a pierrot hanged on a gallows, saluted by a dapper gentleman in a top hat. Translated, the verse reads, "Look at Pierrot hanged, who did not return the book; if he returned it, he would not have been hanged."
This is believed to be the only surviving school book thus decorated by the youthful Toulouse-Lautrec. Huxley wrote glowingly of it: "Even as a boy, as yet completely ignorant of the masters under whose influence his mature style was to be formed, Houku-sai, Degas, Goya, even in the margins of his Latin dictionary he was making manifest the vitalizing spirit in the movements of life."
Literature:
A. Huxley, "Toulouse-Lautrec: Reality Revisited with the Amoral Eye", Esquire, September 1955
Centenaire de Toulouse-Lautrec, J. Bouchot-Saupique, Albi, Palais de la Berbie, 1964
Paris, Réunion des musées nationaux, 1964
La Revue du Louvre et des musées de France, vol. 26, 1976, p. 453, no. 20.
Provenance:
Jake Zeitlin, c.f. the Huxley article cited above
Sale: Geneva, June 13-15, 1960, lot 539
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, December 11, 1990, lot 481, sold $165,000
Jay I. Kislak, United States
The Comité Toulouse-Lautrec has confirmed the authenticity of this work
Auction: Rare Books, Autographs & Maps, Apr 11, 2025
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Auction of Rare Books, Autographs & Maps on April 11, 2025
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The Latin Grammar of Toulouse-Lautrec, Illustrated with Hundreds of Small Drawings Tops $70k
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We Invite You to Contact Us for a Complimentary Auction Evaluation of Your Collection
NEW YORK, NY -- Doyle presented an auction of Rare Books, Autographs & Maps on Friday, April 11, 2025 at 10am. The sale included an extensive collection of illustrated books and fine bindings, many from a private collection purchased at auction in the 1970s and off the market until the present time. Here are copies of the first edition of Nerciat’s erotic classic Le Diable au Corps, and an early and curiously illustrated edition of the exceedingly naughty Academie des Dames. From the same collection comes a splendid Levitzky binding with batik endpapers on a work illustrated by Georges Barbier, with an original watercolor by the master. Many finely bound sets are featured in the sale, most notably an exceptionally luxurious set of Charles Dickens, one of 15 copies bound in sixty volumes, in superb red levant morocco with onlays.
As usual, the sale included a selection of interesting maps and atlases, such as a copy of Turgot’s 1734 bird’s eye plan of Paris, and a finely colored celestial map by Andreas Cellarius. Additionally, there is a sizable group of globes and instruments in the auction, including a pair of 15-inch library globes and a 20-inch celestial globe by Cary, as well as three English pocket globes, a “dissected” paper globe, and a collection of rare pocket-sized navigational instruments and sundials, notably an exquisite 17th century silver “Butterfield” type sundial by the Parisian instrument maker Pierre Sevin.
One lot that bears special note is the Latin grammar owned by the young Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, used by him while studying for his baccalaureate examination. In this, the artist has penned hundreds of tiny ink sketches, ranging from studies of horses to caricatured faces. Toulouse-Lautrec was 16 to 17 years old at the time, and his genius was just starting to declare itself, evident in the precocious studies of horses in this work, which make the annotations far more compelling than mere juvenalia. (Read More)
Americana is highlighted by a career-spanning archive of letters of Major General Israel Bush Richardson (1815-1862), from his West Point days until his death at Antietam. (Read More). The range of early printing features a complete copy of Graevius’s great 1722 work on Venice, the Splendor Magnificentissimae Urbis Venetiarum Clarissimus with the two large folding plates of the city and all the double-page views of piazzas and palazzos.
The Collection of President Gerald R. Ford and First Lady Betty Ford
Property from the Collection of President Gerald R. Ford and First Lady Betty Ford offered approximately 75 lots of signed books and memorabilia relating to the political career of President Ford and watches, jewelry, and decorative items owned by and gifted to the Fords. Of note is Gerald Ford’s copy of the Official Report of the Warren Commission, of which he was a member, inscribed to him with appreciation from President Lyndon Johnson and each member of the commission. It was John “Jack” Ford who brought George Harrison to the White House, the first of the Beatles to visit, and offered in the sale are two inscribed books on Eastern thought. Of the jewelry, President Ford’s Omega and Piaget watches are offered, as is a sapphire ring that belonged to First Betty Ford. Among the gifts presented to the Fords on their world travels are jewelry items and keepsakes from Jordan and Oman, several in high karat gold. View Lots
Order of Sale
Lots 1–8 Sports and mountaineering
Lots 9–45 Americana
Lots 46–57 Travel
Lots 58–73 Maps and atlases, globes and instruments
Lots 74–114 Antiquarian books and manuscripts
Lots 115–120 Economics and the World Wars
Lots 121–163 Literature (including literary autographs)
Lots 164–178 Color plate books
Lots 179–189 Library sets
Lots 190–215 Fine bookbindings: English, French and Russian
Lots 216–220 Fore-edge paintings
Lots 221–233 Curiosa
Lots 234–249 Limited Editions Club
Lots 250–261 Private press and fine printing
Lots 262–276 Illustration and children's books
Lots 277–280 Applied Art
Lots 281–306 Books on Fine Art and Livres d'artistes
Lots 307–318 American autographs
Lots 319–340 American Presidential documents and signatures
Lots 340–End Property from the Collection of President Gerald R. Ford and First Lady Betty Ford
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