Spanish Scenery. VIVIAN, George. ILLUSTRATED,TRAVEL & EXPLORATION

FIRST EDITION. Large folio (55.5 x 37.5 cm). Publisher's original green quarter morocco-grain roan over cloth boards with floral embossing, spine lettered in gilt. Illustrated title and 32 views after George Vivian on 28 two-tone tinted lithographic plates by Louis Haghe, Thomas Boys, and Paul Gauci, lithographed list of plates on 2 pages, all printed by Day & Haghe. Some light scattered foxing mainly to first two leaves, generally a very good copy. First edition of this superb lithograph book on Spain, one of the finest graphic records of the country, which includes beautiful views of Cordoba, Seville, Bilbao, Malaga, Gibraltar, and Valencia, produced "at different periods in the years 1833 and 1837" (Preface). It was originally issued in six parts and then offered in the present binding at 4 guineas. George Vivian (1798-1873), son of John Vivian of Claverton Manor, near Bath, was a great traveller, accomplished artist, and prominent patron of the arts, who remains best known for his two folio works on Spain and Portugal. He writes in his preface that "during the first period Spain was comparatively tranquil. During the second I saw the demolition of some of the finest convents going on, and observed the sites on which others had recently stood: the prospect of the speedy ruin of nearly all. made me feel a strong desire to preserve some trace of establishments. [with] an interest and character not less in Spain than in Italy". Vivian was travelling in Spain during the First Carlist War (1833-40) when convents and monasteries were routinely sacked and torched by mobs, utilized as factories for the forging of arms, and frequently converted into fortified strongpoints. Jennifer Speake remarks that Vivian's book "encapsulates the appeal of Spain to the Romantic traveller". (Abbey, Travel 154)