Vischer's pictorial of California landscape, trees and forest scenes. Grand features of California scenery, life, traffic and customs. Photographs from the original drawings. In five series of twelve numbers each, with a supplement, and contributions from reliable sources. San Francisco, April, 1870. [San Francisco]: Printed by Joseph Winterburn & Company, No. 417 Clay Street, between Sansome and Battery Streets, [1870]. 29.5x22.5 cm, pp. [i-x], [1], 2-8, [8a-h], [9], 10-132, [i], ii-iii pages. Collation: page [i], added title page printed in red, text as follows: "Vischer's pictorial of California landscape, trees and forest scenes. Grand features of California scenery, life, traffic and customs. San Francisco, April, 1870. Printed by Joseph Winterburn & Company, No. 417 Clay Street, between Sansome and Battery Streets"; page [ii], blank; pages [iii]-[v], three-page poem, "California," printed in gold; page [vi], blank; page [vii], main title page, text as above noting "Photographs from the original drawings ... ;" page [viii], copyright entry notices dated 1863 and 1867; page [ix], table of contents; page [x], blank; pages [1] 2-8, "preface"; pages [8a-8b], blank leaf; page [8c], half title, text reads: "Sixty numbers of landscape"; page [8d], blank; page [8e], contents page, headed: "Vischer's pictorial of California. Sixty views of Californian landscape"; page [8f], blank; page [8g], contents page, headed: "Vischer's pictorial of California. Localization of subjects"; page [8h], blank; (note: pages [8e-8h] present here are not inserted in all copies); pages [9] 10-132, text; pages [i]-iii, "Dedication" printed in red (printed in purple or gold in some copies), tipped in at rear, is a [10]-page folder with title, "Synopsis of Vischer's pictorial of California. Miniature illustrations, landscape, trees and forest scenes, and selections from miscellaneous subjects. Author's complimentary edition for gratifying distant friends," and 9 accordion-hinged plates with reduced photographs of 146 scenes, original decorated bevel-edged green cloth, all panels printed in gold, brown coated endpapers. First edition. This volume of descriptive text was prepared to accompany Vischer's pictorial of California landscape, trees and forest scenes, grand features of Californian scenery, life, traffic and customs (San Francisco, 1870), sets of plates published in various formats (See Currey and Kruska 380). Vischer's preface is dated "April 20, 1870" and his concluding remarks are dated "April 30, 1870." On May 31, 1870 Vischer presented the dedication set to the Society of California Pioneers. The volume of plates comprised 60 views plus some plates from his abandoned Review of California's Progress. The volume of descriptive text was given in proof state. Presumably, finished copies were not available as of the end of May. In a prospectus, dated "June 20, 1870," Vischer stated: "The Pictorial is, thus far, represented by only twenty copies, completed to fulfill engagements to original subscribers." The artist solicited further subscriptions in formats of 100 or 120 plates. How many additional sets were prepared is not known, but the costly nature of the work and the difficulty of preparing the photographic plates indicate that the number was small. Later sets were improved through the addition of supplementary plates. The first sixty plates are identical in each set, but the following supplementary plates rarely agree with the printed listing headed "Vischer's pictorial of California. Localization of subjects" (inserted in some copies of the text volume). The views listed on this leaf are keyed to a photographic reproduction of a map of California (not found in all copies). Vischer's announced aim was to produce graphic rather than artistic drawings. His sketches, based on personal observation or copied from contemporary photographic images, constitute an important historical record of early California. Farquhar (1948) comments: "There is a good deal of interesting information about the Big Trees in the Vischer publications, including odds and ends not to be found elsewhere. The descriptions, together with the views, are helpful in establishing the history of the individual trees and the structures erected in the neighborhood." The Pictorial includes photographic reproductions of views of the Calaveras Big Tree Grove, Yosemite Valley, and other Sierra Nevada scenes (notably, those depicting the Lake Tahoe region). In addition to Vischer's sketches, made between 1858 and 1867, plates reproduce the work of Thomas A. Ayres, Thomas Hill, and others. Currey and Kruska 381 (Format A). Cloth worn at edges, a very good copy. Enclosed in a custom quarter leather clamshell box with leather spine label. Exceedingly rare. There are perhaps five or six extant copies of this book. There is a copy with the synopsis at CtY. (#169858).
No statement of printing.