Georges Rouault

A content-rich collection of letters from the French painter and illustrator Georges Rouault to the Czech publisher Josef Florian, who in 1914 published the first color reproductions of Rouault’s work.

• Sold as a set of 9.
• Georges Rouault (French).
• Most n.p. and n.d. [but Versailles]: ca. 1914.
• 70 pages.
• Various sizes.

Based in Stará Říše, Moravia and Prague, Florian was a crucial figure in Czech publishing, producing fine editions of Rouault, Bloy, Kafka and many others. Regarding the reproductions published by Florian, Rouault gratefully writes in one of the present letters, “C’est la premiere fois que je possede une reproduction fidèle.” In the same letter, Rouault writes, “J’ai mes albums de chansons à votre disposition,” and many of these letters concern these chansons as well as the color printing of his works. There is much, too, about Rouault’s personal life, as well as references to Léon Bloy, whom Florian also published and who was an important friend to and influence on Rouault, as well as to J.K. Huysmans, and to Rouault’s “Miserere,” his famous series of engravings on the miseries of war on which he was then at work.