Alexandre Joseph Desire Bivort (1809-1872)

Album de Pomologie. Bruxelles: Deprez-Parent, 1847- 1849- 1850.

3 volumes in one. Oblong 4to., (9 2/8 x 12 inches). Half-title and three letterpress title-page, additional general chromolithographed title-page (preserved with gossamer Japanese tissue).  137 full-page and one double-page lithographed plates with original hand-colour. Modern full green morocco, gilt (unevenly faded to brown (hinges starting).

Provenance: from the distinguished library of Robert de Belder (1921-1995) and his wife Jelena de Belder-Koracic (1925-2003), horticulturists and proprietors of Arboretum Kalmthout, their sale Sotheby's 28th April 1987, lot 27

First and only edition, and EXCEPTIONALLY RARE IN ANY CONDITION, this set comprises three of the eventual four volumes, published between 1847 and 1851, with a total of 191 plates.

"According to E. A. Bunyard in his 'Guide to the Litature of Pomology', Alexandre Bivort's Album de Pomologie, published in monthly parts over four years, is of 'great value, as it contains coloured plates and accurate descriptions of Van Mons' seedlings, and it forms a wonderful record of the great number of new fruits which were at this time being raised in Belgium' The lithographic printing so beautifully demonstrated in the plates of the Album de Pomologie was well established in Ghent and Brussels by about 1830, with the help of craftsmen from the Netherlands Not many complete sets of the Album seem to have survived. The de Belder copy, sold at Sotheby's in London on 27 April 1987 and described in the sale catalogue (lot 27) [THIS COPY] as a 'pomological rarity', had only three volumes and 137 plates, like the copy in the Lindley Library of the Royal Horticultural Society. There is no copy at all in the British Library, the library of the British Museum (Natural History), or the library of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, but there is at least one other full set in America, in the library of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in Boston." (S. Raphael: Oak Spring Pomona, 1990).