I have been in the rare and antiquarian book business for over forty years; my family has been in the rare books business since 1876. Rare books are in my blood.
Carmen
London: Hutchinson & Co., 1916. Item #06431
Edition de Luxe
One of 100 Copies Signed by René Bull
[BULL, René, illustrator]. MÉRIMÉE, Prosper. Carmen. Translated by A.E. Johnson. With Pictures by René Bull. London: Hutchinson & Co., [n.d, 1916].
Edition de Luxe. Limited to 100 numbered copies (this copy being No. 55), signed by the artist.
Quarto (10 3/4 x 8 7/16 inches; 273 x 214 mm.). [2, blank], x, 204 pp. With color frontispiece and fifteen fine color plates, each with descriptive tissue guard, together with seventy-four black and white illustrations in the text. The plates, richly colored and often heightened with a decorative sensibility drawn from both Orientalist and theatrical traditions, form one of Bull’s most accomplished book illustration cycles.
Original vellum over boards, pictorially stamped and lettered in gilt on front cover and spine, a particularly handsome and appropriate binding for a deluxe issue. Gray and white pictorial endpapers, all edges gilt. Spine a little darkened, as often with vellum; otherwise an excellent and well-preserved copy of this very scarce signed limited edition.
A distinguished illustrated edition of Mérimée’s Carmen, the novella that inspired Georges Bizet’s opera, here interpreted through Bull’s dramatic and highly stylized visual language. His illustrations capture both the exoticism and psychological intensity of the story, blending elements of Art Nouveau, theatrical design, and early twentieth-century decorative illustration.
René Bull (d. 1942) “was born in Ireland and went to Paris to study engineering, but left this for art work in London, 1892. After working for various magazines, he was appointed ‘special’ for Black and White, 1896, attending the Armenian massacres and the Graeco-Turkish War as artist…He served in the First World War in RNVR, 1916, and RAF, 1917. Bull was one of the most versatile specials because his stature as an artist was above average. Not only an accurate reporter, he was a talented comic draughtsman and a brilliant illustrator of fairy stories” (Houfe, The Dictionary of 19th Century British Book Illustrators, p. 81). Works illustrated by Bull include: La Fontaine’s Fables (1905), Uncle Remus, by Joel Chandler Harris (1906), The Arabian Nights (1912), The Russian Ballet by A.E. Johnson (1913), Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1913), Carmen, by Prosper Mérimée (1916), and Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Jonathan Swift (1928).
Price: $950.00