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In-4 (314 x 217 mm). 80 planches gravées à l'aquatinte, tirées sur papier vergé. (Rousseurs.) Demi-maroquin brun du XIX^e siècle, dos à nerfs (abîmé, plats détachés). Provenance: Horatio Curtis (note d'achat datée 1911 sur la garde, donné par sa veuve au:) -- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (vendu en 1974, cachet de désaquisitionnement signé E. Sayrs) -- Collection particulière.

PREMIÈRE ÉDITION, publiée par Goya lui même vers 1799. Tirage limité à 300 exemplaires, seulement 27 furent vendus dans les quatre années qui suivirent.
"Indeed, in publishing his Caprichos in 1799, Goya appears to have involved himself in a commercial undertaking perhaps unique in the life of any artist-engraver past or present. Apparently carried away with enthusiasm for the art of engraving, he acquired more than eighty costly copperplates which he etched and aquatined and from which he then printed some three hundred sets, making a total of about twenty-four thousand impressions. These he advertised in the Madrid daily newspapers, as being for sale in a perfume and liqueur shop in the Calle del Desengaño N° 1 above which he had lived and was probably still ligin at the time. The subjects were satirical, the compositions were unconventional, the technique was novel, and it is not surprising that his enterprise, unsponsored and purely private, should have met with failure in the Madrid of his day. In the course of four years he only succeeded in selling twenty-seven sets of engravings" (Harris I, p. 7).
Horatio Curtis fut grand collectionneur d'estampes et gravures sur bois à Boston. Décédé en 1922, sa veuve fit don de cet exemplaire des Caprichos au Museum of Fine Arts de Boston qui par la suite le vendit, en 1974, pour créer des fonds pour l'achat imminent de la fabuleuse collection de gravures et livres illustrés de Philip Hofer, aujourd'hui un des fleurons de ce musée prestigieux. L'ÉDITION ORIGINALE EST DE TOUTE RARETÉ. Harris 36-115, III/1 (sur 12).