261 - Germaine Richier - [Arthur] Rimbaud. A Season in Hell. The Deserts of Love. Illuminations. Edition based on recent texts and illustrated with original etchings by Germaine Richier. Lausanne, André Gonin 1951. With 24 aquatint etchings, eight of which are full-sheet. Loose double-sheets in original cover, half-parchment slipcase, and outer slipcase.

Germaine Richier - [Arthur] Rimbaud. A Season in Hell. The Deserts of Love. Illuminations. Edition based on recent texts and illustrated with original etchings by Germaine Richier. Lausanne, André Gonin 1951. With 24 aquatint etchings, eight of which are full-sheet. Loose double-sheets in original cover, half-parchment slipcase, and outer slipcase. Auction start time: approx. 3:24 p.m. (schedule subject to change) One of twelve special edition copies, “numbered” A through L (total print run of 130), including a suite of all 24 etchings on Japanese paper, as well as a pencil sketch and a painted copper plate, shown here for the first full-sheet etching from *Les illuminations*. - Print mark signed by the artist and the publisher. - Printed on handmade Auvergne paper by Favier à Lagat with the “fleur de lin” watermark. - The edition was published on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Rimbaud’s death, edited and with an afterword by Jean Graven. - Germaine Richier (1902–1959) was regarded in the 1950s as one of the most important French sculptors. In 1949–1950, her “Christ on the Cross” (in the Church of Notre-Dame-de-Toute-Grâce on the Assy Plateau near Mont Blanc) provoked fierce criticism, at least within the Catholic Church; following the papal edict “Dell’Arte sacra deformatrice,” and was not reinstalled there until 1971. In the 1990s, her work once again gained worldwide recognition in the style of the Renaissance. Monod 9760. - Rauch 196. - ABF, p. 341. - A&B 260 39.7 × 29.7 cm. [8], 144, [8] pages, 1 drawing, 24 etchings (suite), 1 copper plate. - Slipcase cracked and slightly stained. - Minimal foxing. English description: Includes 24 aquatint etchings, eight of which are full-sheet. Loose double sheets in the original wrapper, half-parchment chemise, and slipcase. One of twelve special edition copies, “numbered” A through L (total edition of 130), including a set of all 24 etchings on Japanese paper, as well as a pencil sketch and a painted copper plate for the first full-sheet etching from »Les illuminations«. - Colophon signed by the artist and the publisher. - On handmade Auvergne paper by Favier à Lagat with the “fleur de lin” watermark. - The edition was published to mark the 60th anniversary of Rimbaud’s death, edited and with an afterword by Jean Graven. - “Germaine Richier [...] is a kind of counterpart in sculpture to Baudelaire in literature, a kinship that would strike the visitor to any substantial collection of her work, such as that at the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris. Her etching-aquatints for Rimbaud’s *Une Saison en Enfers* (including *Les Déserts de l’Amour* and *Illuminations* in the same volume) are less macabre than one might have expected. The youthful figure in one of the hors-texte is conceived almost in a romantic vein, and with its border of reeds and teasels, it is poetically decorative.” (W. J. Strachan, p. 128 ff.). Slipcase chipped and slightly stained. - Minimal foxing.