72 - Max ERNST. Natural History. Paris, Jeanne Bucher, 1926.

Max ERNST. Natural History. Paris, Jeanne Bucher, 1926. Folio-sized album, loose-leaf, in the publisher’s portfolio bound in blue half-percale, with a printed title label mounted on the front cover, and laces. First edition. Limited edition of 306 copies: one of the 250 copies on vellum (no. 59), numbered and signed by the artist. Important album of 34 rubbings by Max Ernst reproduced by phototype and with a preface by Jean Arp: “A Surrealist Cosmogony” (Werner Spies). They were selected from among more than a hundred frottages created by Max Ernst in 1925–1926. In *History of a Natural History* (1937), he explained his discovery of the frottage technique on August 10, 1925, placing a quote from Leonardo da Vinci at the beginning of his essay: “It is like the ringing of a bell that makes one hear what one imagines.” Ernst added drawn elements to his rubbings of natural objects. Regarding Max Ernst’s rubbings and the resulting paintings, Breton remarked: “Here again, surreal reality—and not reality itself—will reassert itself.” The second volume edited by Jeanne Bucher (1872–1946), published one year after Jean Lurçat’s *Baroques*. (Jeanne Bucher, an Avant-Garde Gallery: 1925–1946, from Max Ernst to de Staël, 1994, pp. 91–92, and No. II, pp. 95–98.) A fine, complete copy. Plate XIV is duplicated. The portfolio’s percale cover has been restored.