CHAGALL (Marc) - GOGOL (Nicolas). Les Ames mortes. Original - Lot 162

CHAGALL (Marc) - GOGOL (Nicolas). Les Ames mortes. Original etchings by Marc Chagall. Paris, Tériade, 1948. 2 volumes in-folio (380 x 280 mm), leaves, 310 pages, in filled printed covers, cardboard folders with titled labels on spine, publisher's general slipcase. ISSUE OF 318 COPIES, all on watermarked Arches wove paper, numbered and signed by the artist. This one numbered (216). The best illustration by the painter Marc Chagall, comprising 118 ORIGINAL EAUX-FORTES (96 hors-texte, 11 ornate bandeaux-lettrines and 11 plates for the illustrated table of plates). The last plate (last leaf of the table of plates) features portraits of Gogol and Vollard, as well as a self-portrait of the painter. The masterpiece by Russian writer Nicolas Vassilievitch Gogol (1809-1852). Les Ames mortes ("Dead souls" referring to male serfs in Russia). After Marc Chagall submitted to Ambroise Vollard his wish to illustrate Nicolas Gogol's great novel, he engraved 96 full-page etchings and 11 table plates between 1923 and 1927. All were printed on Arches in 1927 by Louis Fort. The publishing project was interrupted, as was that of La Fontaine's Fables, but resumed by Tériade in 1947. To the original plates, preserved as they had been printed by Louis Fort, Tériade had the artist add 11 engraved bandeaux-lettrines. GOGOL'S MASTERPIECE AND MARC CHAGALL'S MOST EXTRAORDINARY SUITE EN NOIR, engraved in 1927 for Vollard, finally published by Tériade in 1948. A FINE COPY. Bibliography: Cramer, Marc Chagall les livres illustrés, Geneva, no. 17; Sorlier, Marc Chagall, Le Livre des livres, Sauret-Trinckvel, 1990, pp. 10-11; Hommage à Tériade, CNAC-RMN, 1973, pp. 86-87; Artists' Books in the Modern Era, 1870-2000, London, Thames & Hudson, 2001, p. 178, no. 103; The Artist and the Book, 50.