Le soleil des eaux, spectacle pour une toile des pêcheurs

First edition, one of 170 numbered copies on vélin du Marais, the only issue after 30 copies on Arches.

Custom chemise and slipcase, chemise in half blue box calf, flat spine with blind and palladium-stamped lettering, date in palladium at foot, patterned paper boards, slipcase edged in blue box calf, patterned paper boards, sides and spine in petrol blue paper, signed by Boichot.
A very fine copy.
Illustrated with 3 original etchings in black by Georges Braque and one in black and grey as frontispiece.
Signed by René Char and Georges Braque on the colophon, with an exceptionally added original artist's proof signed in pencil on onionskin paper, signed by Braque in pencil alongside the autograph inscription "EA" (épreuve d'artiste [artist's proof]). Faint traces of previous white adhesive in the upper margin of the verso.

 Superb feminine profile framed by stars and leaves, an artist's proof signed by Georges Braque for his last illustration of René Char's Soleil des eaux.

"Le Soleil des eaux : spectacle pour une toile des pêcheurs was presented by René Char as a commissioned work. The original idea, conceived in 1946, was to make a film, but it ultimately Le Soleil des eaux cam to life as a radio production. Broadcast in 1948 with music by Pierre Boulez, the text was published the following year by the bookseller Henri Matarasso." (René Char dans le miroir des eaux, 2008, no. 35).

Following this trial proof, the work was printed in an edition of 200 copies on Marais vellum by the Lacourière press. This proof remains unrecorded even in the latest catalogue raisonné by Orozco.

Dora Vallier recounts the genesis of the collaboration between Char and Braque that paved the way for one of his finest illustrated books: "During the summer of 1947, Braque had travelled to Avignon for the exhibition of Peintures et sculptures contemporaines organised by Christian and Yvonne Zervos at the Palais des Papes, and it was there, in René Char's native region of  Vaucluse, that the meeting between the painter and the poet took place. This meeting lead to the illustration of Le Soleil des eaux. Braque knew Provence well as he stayed there on numerous occasions since 1906, and was thus perhaps more attuned than anyone to the evocation of that other Provence, condemned to disappear, which forms the central theme of Le Soleil des eaux." (Braque, l'Œuvre gravé : catalogue raisonné, no. 47).