Van Lennep, Henry John | The Oriental Album—rare and important American colorplate album

Van Lennep, Henry John

The Oriental Album: Twenty illustrations in oil colors of the people and scenery of Turkey, with an explanatory and descriptive text. New York: Anson D.F. Randolph, 1862

Folio (457 x 343 mm). Tinted lithographic additional title by Charles Parsons, 20 chromolithographic plates by Parsons after van Lennep, all printed by Endicott & Co. of New York; occasional very light spotting to plates, text leaves lightly toned. Bound to style in half-black morocco retaining publisher's gilt-pictorial cloth boards; inner hinges reinforced, covers a little scratched with some sympathetic restoration.

A rare and important American colorplate book in very fine condition.

First edition of one of the most ambitious American colorplate books of the nineteenth century—a rare and lavish chromolithographic record of Ottoman costume and daily life, produced at the height of the American Civil War. Van Lennep, the son of European merchants in Smyrna and later a missionary across the Ottoman Empire, based the work on his own original drawings executed during two decades of travel in Turkey, Armenia, and surrounding regions.

A remarkable American contribution to the tradition of Orientalist costume books, The Oriental Album is distinguished by its striking scenes of everyday life, including rare representations of Jewish, Armenian, and Gypsy customs. Subjects include “A Turkish Effendi,” “Turkish and Armenian Ladies (abroad),” “Armenian Marriage Procession,” “Jewish Merchant,” and “Gypsy Fortune Telling.”

Described by McGrath as “the one really big chromolithographic book of this decade.” “Endicott achieved a rich variety of color which demonstrated the increased technical ability of American printers in the medium” (Reese).

REFERENCES:

Bennett, p. 108; Blackmer Catalogue 1715; Blackmer Sale 1500; DAB XIX, 200; McGrath, pp. 38, 115, 162; Reese, Stamped with a National Character 97; Atabey 1274