PIEUX (Léonard alias Baroness Helen d'Oettingen). Grant me a - Lot 219

PIEUX (Léonard alias Baroness Helen d'Oettingen). Grant me an audience... Decorated and wood-engraved by Léopold Survage. P., SIC, 1920. In-4 square ff. (365x340), in publisher's portfolio. (355 x 320 mm). ORIGINAL EDITION of poems by Hélène d'Oettingen under the pseudonym Léonard Pieux. Fully engraved, text and illustrations by Léopold Survage in several colors. 18 unencumbered leaves, including 13 full-page color woodcuts (2 in a single color; one double-page folded woodcut), 1 justification page, 1 printer's proof page, 1 publisher's vignette (all 3 engraved in red) and 2 blank leaves, the first before the justification, the second at the end. The woodcut title is reproduced in brown on the front cover. One of the 28 copies actually printed, no. 25. It is justified in pencil by the author and artist, with a correction by Survage, who has crossed out the number of the planned 112 copies and added 28, the number of copies actually printed. Edition: 28 copies on Chine (planned edition, not realized at 112 copies: 1 - 100, A-J, I-II with crossed-out plates). No printer was willing to take on the engraving of the woodcuts, which were very large and of irregular thickness, and Survage carried out the printing himself on a "foot press"; due to the scale of the task, the artist limited the number of copies to 28. Hélène Miontchinska (1878-1950), Baroness d'Oettingen, friend and first biographer of Guillaume Apollinaire, owner with Serge Férat of Les Soirées de Paris since 1913, ran a literary salon in Paris, which she enlivened with burlesque and iconoclastic stagings. She used many pseudonyms for her artistic activities: Edouard Angiboult as a painter, and Roch Grey, Jean Cérusse and Léonard Pieux as writers. The woodwork was done by Léopold Survage, who had been associated for a time with Hélène d'Oettingen. Together with Serge Férat, she later helped Survage by renting him a studio on rue Campagne-Première. Grant Me an Audience is one of the most magical illustrated books of the 20th century. The composition of the text in banderole within the woodcut decor has led to this book being described as a "simultaneous" work, by analogy with La Prose du Transsibérien. In addition to the technical feat of printing this entirely Survage produced some of his most outstanding works on wood.