Serres John Thomas Illustrator (1 results)
More imagesPublished by London Samuel Leigh, 1825
- Hardcover
- First Edition
Seller: Shapero Rare Books, London, United KingdomShapero Rare Books
Contact seller5-star sellerCondition: Used
£ 1,250.00
£ 15.00 shippingShips from United Kingdom to U.S.A.Quantity: 1 available
First edition; folio (41 x 28.5 cm); 10 hand-coloured lithograph plates including frontispiece, frontis. and title a little soiled otherwise internally bright; later half red morocco, cloth boards, spine in six compartments with gilt morocco lettering piece, later endpapers, a very good copy; 8pp. A lively set of plates depictin…g the cemetery of Pere La Chaise, in particular focusing on the monument of Abelard and Heloise. John Thomas Serres (1759-1825), son of Dominic Serres (1722â"1793), was a highly successful marine painter who exhibited extensively at the Royal Academy and rose to be official be Maritime Painter to King George III. Serres was ruined by the actions of his wife, Olivia Serres (1772-1834), who had several affairs (giving birth to a son by another man before their divorce in 1804) and went into debt trying to convince anyone that she was the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Cumberland. Serres attempted to restore his finances by establishing the Royal Coburg Theatre in 1818, which became the 'Old Vic', but failed to make the money he needed and died in a debtors' prison in 1825. Perhaps he saw himself in the tortured Abelard and produced this work, his last, as a different sort of monument to his failed relationship.
