Les français peints par eux-mêmes : encyclopédie morale du dix-neuvième siècle
A multi-volume French social encyclopedia issued by L. Curmer in Paris from 1840, in which writers and artists catalogued the trades, classes and street types of nineteenth-century France for a middle-class reading public. Wood-engraved full-length figures stand alone on blank ground, drawn in fine hatched line: apprentices, dandies, labourers, shawled women, with clothing, tools and posture rendered as character.
