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Lot Essay
"Each plate is a moment frozen in time, a snapshot that shows the inhabitants strolling, conversing, or working in their everyday lives, with different street corners or prominent buildings as their backdrop. The artist succeeded in giving the viewer an intimate sense of the life of the city as well as its chief monuments" – America Pictured to the Life
First edition of the first American color-plate book. "Pride of place in American color plate books must always go to William Birch, whose The City of Philadelphia...In the Year 1800 was the pioneering work of the genre. An accomplished artist and miniaturist, Birch engraved all of the plates for his collection of street and building scenes. It was a remarkably ambitious work at the time, and only a few small individual color plates predate it in American publishing. The book was sufficiently popular for Birch to reissue it in somewhat varying formats in 1804, 1809, and 1828" (Stamped with a National Character).
Moreover, unlike earlier uncolored American view books, this work was also the first "to record both the buildings and people of urban America in any detail. Rather than exhibiting a static iconography of the most notable architecture, Birch produced a series of street scenes which draw the viewer into the life of the town" (America Pictured to the Life). This copy includes two states of the "High Street from the Country Market-place" view, the latter of which includes a depiction of George Washington's funeral procession; two versions of the Bank of the United States, in Third Street, seen from opposite directions, one dated 1798 and one 1799; and an extra engraving published later: "The Theatre in Chestnut Street" after Birch, 1804. America Pictured to the Life 3; Bennett, p.13; Bobins 37; Deák 228; Howes B-459 ("dd"); Federal Hundred 79; Stamped with a National Character 1; Snyder, City of Independence p. 224.
First edition of the first American color-plate book. "Pride of place in American color plate books must always go to William Birch, whose The City of Philadelphia...In the Year 1800 was the pioneering work of the genre. An accomplished artist and miniaturist, Birch engraved all of the plates for his collection of street and building scenes. It was a remarkably ambitious work at the time, and only a few small individual color plates predate it in American publishing. The book was sufficiently popular for Birch to reissue it in somewhat varying formats in 1804, 1809, and 1828" (Stamped with a National Character).
Moreover, unlike earlier uncolored American view books, this work was also the first "to record both the buildings and people of urban America in any detail. Rather than exhibiting a static iconography of the most notable architecture, Birch produced a series of street scenes which draw the viewer into the life of the town" (America Pictured to the Life). This copy includes two states of the "High Street from the Country Market-place" view, the latter of which includes a depiction of George Washington's funeral procession; two versions of the Bank of the United States, in Third Street, seen from opposite directions, one dated 1798 and one 1799; and an extra engraving published later: "The Theatre in Chestnut Street" after Birch, 1804. America Pictured to the Life 3; Bennett, p.13; Bobins 37; Deák 228; Howes B-459 ("dd"); Federal Hundred 79; Stamped with a National Character 1; Snyder, City of Independence p. 224.