(Find me at 50 Watts Books.)
Count Franz Graf von Pocci's Viola Tricolor: In Pictures and Rhyme (1875, Germany)
The Painter at His Easel
Thus many a painter once gay and glad,
Sits before his picture, and says full sad:
“Oh had I but turn’d this work in to cash!”
“But nobody buys since the last great smash!”
Franz Pocci (1807–1876) was Bavarian court official but also a puppeteer, Marionette theater director, illustrator, poet, and playwright. Viola Tricolor's proto-Surrealist anthropomorphic pansies appear to be his best-remembered work. Read more about Pocci at wikipedia and see this website for more of his illustration work.
I have in my hands a little 1977 reprint which is apparently already out of my price range. The original was printed using chromolithography and surely looks incredible. I'm not sure where I first read about the book; maybe Princeton's Graphic Arts blog.
Also see: Mimpish Squinnies and the rest of the Kinderbuch series
Faculty Professors
Here stand the University chaps,
In their grand official gowns and caps;
And thinks full sure, each learned elf:
“The cleverest here? - ‘tis I myself!”
See the full "Kinderbuch series" of German, Austrian, and Swiss children's books
