Oblong folio, (420 x 294 mm). Title and index of plates printed on a fine laid paper with Bartolome Mongelos´ watermark providing explanations on the subjects treated and the characters represented, 33 original etchings, aquatints and drypoints by Francisco Goya printed on thick laid paper. Plates 5, 8, 9, 12, 14, 15, 19 have the Morato watermark, plates 24 and 26 have watermark N°1, the rest is on identical paper but without watermark. Contemporary red morocco backed cloth, spine with raised bands and lettered in gilt, lightly rubbed. Excellent example, very clean with fine impressions, only marginal inconsequential foxing; slightly cropped by binder, tiny hole due to a lack of paper on plate 22 (2 mm), a few very pale small spots in the margins of some plates (22, 23, 25), pale damp not affecting the image in the lower right corner from pl. 21, small repaired tear in the margin of pl. 19 well away from image, excellent example.

Provenance: Valentin Carderera, who presents it as a gift to Theophile Gautier, manuscript inscription on flyleaf: “La Tauromaquia by F. Goya a M. Theophil Gauthier (sic) en prueba del mas distinguished aprecio Su admirador Valentin Carderera”; Theophile Gautier, a celebrated French writer, poet and figure of the art world, (engraved ex-libris dated 1872), his sale Catalogue des livres composant la bibliothèque de M. Théophile Gautier, Paris, Labitte, 1873, n° 66: “exemplaire avec envoi signé Valentin Calderera (sic)”; Jorge Ortiz Linares (1894 - 1965), Bolivian Ambassador and heir to one of the wealthiest men in the world, known as the “Tin King”, Simon Patiño, a.k.a as “The Andean Rockefeller”.

Valentín Carderera (1796-1880), famous Spanish painter, was a great collector of Goya (paintings, drawings and engravings). He was court painter to Queen Isabella II and a director of the Prado. Without him and without his work as a collector, the reception of Goya in 19th century Europe, and therefore the preservation of his works, would have been very different.