The Spitzer Collection. Two sets of works pertaining to this iconic collection. Paris: 1890-1891;

Lot includes: 

La Collection Spitzer. Paris and London: Maison Quaintin, Librairie Centrale, and MM. Davis, 1890-1891 

6 portfolio volumes (lacking atlas volume, as usual), folio (503 x 360 mm). Number 113 of 600 copies, titles printed in red and black, text leaves ruled in red, with approximately 342 photogravure or chromolithographed plates, some heightened with gold, numerous wood-engraved illustrations, neat contemporary pencil annotations recording prices realized; some closed marginal tears, offsetting, and browning, primarily to text leaves. Housed in original green cloth card-backed folding portfolios, covers and spines gilt-lettered; some rubbing to extremities, with some loss to ties. 

[And:]

Catalogue des Objets d'Art...Collection Spitzer. Paris: Paul Chevallier and Charles Mannheim, 1893

4 volumes (two text and two plate), folio (from 395 x 300 mm, to 585 x 415 mm). In-text illustrations, price list laid in; some foxing and browning. Uniformly bound in grey-green cloth, gilt-lettered labels to spines; extremities rubbed with some staining. 

Sold as a collection of plates—not subject to return.

Provenance
Sir Rowand Anderson (Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, Sir Rowand Anderson Bequest bookplates to front pastedowns of Catalogue des Objets d'Art...) — "DBI" (monogrammed bookplate to front pastedowns)

Catalogue note
Frederic Spitzer was born in Vienna in 1815. Following his military career, he retuned home and purchased his first artwork: an engraving by Albrecht Dürer, which he later sold in Paris for a significant profit. In 1852, he settled in Paris and became one of Europe’s leading art dealers, renowned for his passion for medieval and Renaissance material. Upon his death in 1890, his personal collection was one of the largest and most coveted in all of Europe.

The Spitzer collection was publicly auctioned over the course of three months in 1893. Prior to the sale, editorials in American newspapers implored institutions and private donors to join forces in order to acquire the collection en bloc for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Despite these efforts, much of the material was purchased by George Salting, an Australian-born and London-based private collector, who bequeathed the works to the British Museum, London's National Gallery, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.