A fine impression of the definitive state,

Printed after the steelfacing of the plate, from the album edition of 340 (apart from the deluxe edition of 99 which were hand-signed in brown ink). One of twelve plates from the album illustrating the Honore de Balzac text Le Chef-d'Oeuvre Inconnu (The Unknown Masterpiece), published by Ambroise Vollard, Paris, 1931; printed by Louis Fort, Paris.

In excellent condition, printed on a sheet with full margins. 'Le Chef d'Oeuvre inconnu can be considered to be Balzac's declaration of aesthetic faith, at least as far as painting is concerned, and his most fervent plea for the cause of art and the artist. Through the character of an lold painter named Frenhofer, who has been working towards the completion of his painting 'La Belle Noiseuse' for ten years, Balzac explores them problem of the artist torn between ecstasies of creation and the quest for perfection in execution. He also explores the rreationship of the painter and his model. In Frenhoder's eyes the woman he has painted has become his creature, his misstress (the Pygmalion effect); his friends, the painter Porbus, and the young Poussin, see only 'a confused mass of colors contained by a multitude of strange lines' by which Frenhofer has successively covered his canvas in the belief that he would attain perfection. But in the quest of absolute perfection there lurks suicide. Frenhofer, upon upon realizing that his friends see nothing in his paintings, burns his canvases and dies. Picasso's twelve etchings for Le Chef d'Oeuvre inconnu do not illustrate the evetns which take place in the story: rather, they deal with the novel's deeper meaning, especially the various elements of the artist's relationship to his models.

Bloch 85; Geiser/Baer 126 b. 1.; Cramer 20 IV