Rouault, Georges. Miserere. With 57 (st. 58) original aquatint etchings by G. Rouault (aquatint and sugar aquatint over heliogravures of ink drawings, reworked with drypoint, roulette, polishing steel, etc.), mostly monogrammed and dated in the plate 1922 to 1927. Paris, Éditions de l'Étoile filante, 1948. Gr. folio (68 x 52 cm). [130] (partly w.) pp. Loose quires in original half-parchment portfolio with gilt-stamped spine title and brass clasp (browned, some spotting, lower capital slightly bumped). Monod 9966 - Chapon, Rouault, Nos. 54 to 111 - Chapon, Livres, p. 74 - Rauch 156 - Hogben/Watson 72 - Thiem 159 - One of 425 numbered copies (GA 450). - During the war 1914-18 the artist received the first impulses for the Miserere, a graphic cycle begun in 1917, completed ten years later, but revised again and again and published only in 1948. Originally commissioned by Ambroise Vollard, the work was to be published in two parts as "Guerre" and "Miserere" with 100 illustrations and a text by André Suarès. Due to Vollard's death and the Second World War, the planned work was not completed. Some of the etchings were lost in the war. In 1947 Rouault was able to rescue the Jacquemin prints from Vollard's estate and entrust them to the publishing company L'Étoile Filante, which published them in 1948 in the present edition without the text by Suarès with a preface by Rouault. - Untrimmed copy. - Lacking plate VIII ("Qui ne se grime pas?"). - Faintly browned, slightly bumped at the lower corners.