The gay and festive scenes enacted in the old Conciergerie in Paris during the days of the French Revolution, when scores of noble men and women of the highest rank were imprisoned by order of the mob, illumine the most striking pages of European history.  The careless Gallic character was perhaps never manifested so conspicuously as when, in the grand hall of that great jail, counts and countesses marquises and marchionesses, dukes and duchesses, and nobles of all sorts, young and old, married and single, famous and infamous, rich and poor, loyal and disloyal, gathered to make merry, because on the morrow and one of them might be guillotined; and, when the order actually came for the departure of the brightest and best of them to the scaffold, the leave-taking was even jocose, and divine philosophy so prevailed with the victim himself that one would have thought he was marching to celebrate the chief feast of his life.  Scores of these extraordinary Frenchmen are represented in the picture, most of them holding carnival, while at the extreme end the door opens to admit another victim, who is coming down the steps between two guards, and at the extreme right a beast of a man acts as turnkey and charge d’affaires.  To use the words of Lamartine, these French royalists, confined in separate cells at right, “met the common hall of the prison during the day.  Here they carried on the gay life of the court and the chateau with all their national vivacity.  They held their little receptions, at which they appeared elegantly and richly attired.   Musical parties, coquetting and gambling, were their occupation all day.”  The painter is Mr. W. H. Fisk, of whom scarcely anything is known on this side of the Atlantic.

IMPORTANT TO NOTE

Antique prints, etchings, engravings, and lithographs are printing processes which use steel, copper, stone or wood blocks or plates to produce a picture on paper.

Most antique prints and engravings, which are seen on the internet today, are bookplates.  Because they are pages from a book, there are multiple copies in existence.  This does not, however, mean that they are "reproductions" that have been printed recently.  Because they were, at some point, part of books, some have been preserved in excellent condition, while others show signs of age, as yellow spots or darkness on the edge of the page from being handled.

Engravings, lithographs, ect. are high quality pieces of art, as it took a highly trained artist many hours of work to produce one.  Although there may be multiple copies still in existence, the date of the item should be stated in the auction, thus giving the buyer an idea of it's age.