Marcus Elieser Bloch

Marcus Elieser Bloch (1723-1799)
Ichthyologie, ou histoire naturelle, générale et particulière des Poissons. Avec des figures enluminées, dessinées d'après nature. Translated from the German by Jean-Charles Thibault de Laveux. Berlin: Louis Phillippe Wegner for the author and François de la Garde (parts 1-6) and Didot le jeune in Paris and White & Son in London (parts 4-6), 1785-1788. 6 parts only (of 12) in 3 volumes (440 x 290mm). Half-titles, 4pp. subscribers' list, engraved title vignettes by Berger after Rosenberg. 3 engraved additional emblematic titles by Berger after Rosenberg, 216 fine hand-coloured engraved plates, 6 printed in sanguine, 2 in bistre, and 1 in blue, by F.G. Berger, Berger sen., G. Bodenehr, C. Darchow, P. Haas, J.F. Henning, C. Ludwig Schmidt, J.G. Schmidt and others after J.F. Henning, Krüger jun. and others, most plates uncut. (Lacking the portrait as usual, old repaired 120mm. tear to plate 95 running horizontally from inner margin into image.) Contemporary blue marbled paper board
FIRST EDITION IN FRENCH of Bloch's 'fundamental treatise on general ichthyology' (Wood), and an excellent, unsophisticated example although incomplete. All the plates are finely hand-coloured by a contemporary hand, many are heightened in silver, and some are hand-coloured over a printed base of brilliant colour. Bloch was born in Ansbach and studied medicine and the natural sciences; he practised as a physician in Berlin, and while the Ichthyologie is rightly considered his masterpiece, he also wrote various other important scientific works. The German edition of the Ichthyologie, entitled Allgemeine Naturgeschichte der Fische, was published in 12 parts with 432 plates. The work was subdivided into a section on the fish of Germany (parts 1-3, published in 1782-1785) and a second on 'foreign' fish (parts 4-12, published from 1785-1795). The present French edition, without the sub-division, was also eventually completed in twelve parts (with parts 6 to 12 appearing between 1795 and 1797