Orme's Collection of British Field Sports

The finest and most important sporting book of the last two centuries. 'Very rare. The first and only edition of the finest and most important sporting book of the last two centuries' (Schwerdt). The rarity of this work is owed to the frequency at which copies were broken up for display (Abbey and Schwerdt).

Tooley calls it 'a magnificent work, the most valuable English colour plate book on sport'. Although there are fox, stag and hare hunting scenes, the majority of plates depict the shooting of different game birds in deeply rural woods and pastureland. The present copy contains the plates in an early state, printed on sheets watermarked 1804, 1805 or 1806 (Abbey records copies dated as late as 1819). The word 'chevau' in plate 2 has an 'x' added in pencil.

Samuel Howitt (1756/7–1822) was an English painter, illustrator, and etcher of animals, hunting, horse-racing, and landscape scenes. He was closely associated in his art with Thomas Rowlandson, whose sister he married. Howitt's early watercolour style has similarities to Rowlandson's, but Howitt developed a more individual style as his career as a sporting artist progressed. He seems to have had an innate capacity for drawing animals, from commonplace hare and deer to exotic species that he studied in menageries. He was an animated draughtsman, and his drawings of hunts and sporting events have a fluidity and excitement fitting to the subject (ODNB).

Edward Orme (1775–1848) was, after Rudolph Ackermann, the most important publisher of illustrated books during the short golden age of the coloured aquatint. Orme's output totalled some 700 illustrations, but his monument is his British Field Sports.

First edition; landscape folio (46.5 x 58.5 cm); hand-coloured aquatint title, list of plates with hand-coloured aquatint vignette, 20 hand-coloured aquatint plates principally by W.M. Craig, J. Godby, and H. Merke after Howitt, plate captions in English and French, plates 2 and 9 with the printed overslips correcting the caption, and plate 2 with the letter 'x' added to 'cheveau' in manuscript, a few small tears to bottom margins of title and plates list, a touch of offsetting, plates clean and bright; contemporary half calf recornered and rebacked with original spine laid down, marbled boards, gilt spine in seven compartments with gilt morocco lettering piece, later endpapers, boards rubbed, preserved in a modern cloth case with gilt calf title label, internally a near-fine copy.

Abbey (Scenery), 14; Mellon/Podeschi 86; Schwerdt II, p53; Tooley 273.