Printing limited to 82 copies on vélin de Rives, including 15 with a suite and 7 nominative copies.
One of 7 nominative copies, this one printed for René Char.
Signed presentation inscription: “avec chaleur” [by PAB], with the signatures of PAB and Georges Braque.
Mariette Lachaud was the daughter of the Braque household’s housekeeper, and soon became his assistant in the studio at Varengeville. “One day the painter gave her a camera,” recalls Joanne Snrech, curator at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen. “Mariette Lachaud then began photographing daily life in the house. There is a body of work that remains little explored. The photographs are not always of very high quality, but she was always there at the right moment. She captured very intimate instants. It is a precious testimony.”
This is one of Braque’s last books; he died a few months later, in August 1963. In the interval, Char and Braque produced one of their most remarkable achievements, Lettera Amorosa, with 27 lithographs by the painter reprising the theme of the bird, which also appears here in the large lithograph at the head of the volume.
Songer à ses dettes, a tribute Char wrote and published in October, underscored the fervent friendship uniting the two men, “substantial allies.”