Rouault, Georges, and André Suarès | Rouault’s artist’s book with illustrations of the Passion of the Christ

Rouault, Georges, and André Suarès

Passion. Paris, Ambroise Vollard, 1939

Folio (445 x 335 mm). Wood-engravings after Rouault in the text and 4 (of 17) black-and-white aquatint plates, hors-text, printed on various paper stocks; generally a clean and bright copy. Loose sheets in original printed paper wrapper with glassine, as issued; light wear, a dampstain at the foot of the spine, the glassine tattered, as is often the case. Custom clamshell case, red morocco backed marbled paper boards; staining, wear, joints cracking but sound.

Limited edition of 270 copies, an unnumbered hors serie example on Vergé de Montval paper.

"The passion of Christ is recounted by Suarès in dramatic narrative form and illustrated by Rouault with an intensity of feeling usually equaled only in medieval art, which these plates often recall. This was the last of Vollard's books to be published in his lifetime" (The Artist and the Book).

REFERENCES

The Artist and the Book 272

PROVENANCE

Donald & Barbara Bady (bookplate pasted inside clamshell case)