À La Recherche du Temps Perdu - In Search of Lost Time
AUTHOR: Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
ILLUSTRATOR: Kees Van Dongen (1877-1968)
FORMAT/BINDING: Decorative Cloth
CONDITION: Very Good (with box cover)
EDITION: Limited - 8213 / 8500
PUBLISHER: Gallimard
BINDER: Paul Bonet
PLACE: Paris
DATE: 1947
BOOK SIZE: 7.5 in x 9 in (each)
IMAGES are ACTUAL Book
Please contact us to request further information or additional images.
Singerie, Ltd is pleased to have obtained one of the 8500 copies of this book. (8213/8500)*
“One of the most profound achievements of the human imagination”
Marcel Proust (1871-1922) - À la recherche du temps perdu or In Search of Lost Time.
In January of 1909, he remembered and recalled a childhood memory when he tasted a rusk (which is a twice-baked bread which he called a madeleine) dipped in tea. By July he retired from the world to right this book and the first publication was funded by Proust in 1913. He only planned on two more volumes, but when the war broke out, he spent time revising. In June 1919, he released À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (Within a Budding Grove or Shadow of Young Girls in Flower). With the release of this volume and a reprint of Swann, he became famous. In 1921 he released Le Côté de Guermantes (the Guermantes Way) and Sodome et Gomorrhe (City of the Plain or Sodome and Gomorrah). The last three parts were published posthumously by his brother Robert. They include 1923 La Prisonnière (The Captive), 1925 Albertine disparue (The Sweet Cheat Gone), and in 1927 Le Temps retrouvé (Time Regained).
Kees Van Dongen (1877 – 1968) - Born Cornelis Theodorus Maria 'Kees' van Dongen (1877 –1968) was a Dutch-French painter who was one of the leading Fauves. Fauves was coined by art critic Louis Vauxcelles for the group of artists that used bright colors. By 1905 he had left the influence of his training and symbolism style to become more controversial by exhibiting at the Salon d’Automne exhibit with a more radical form and color.
His most important period is considered to be 1905-1920 where he focused on dancers, singers, masquerades, theater and all types of after-hours life. When he started to exhibit in Paris with Matisse, Derain, Marquet, Vlaminck, Camoin and Puy, he moved into a more avante-garde styling.
In 1947, Kees van Dongen illustrated À la recherche du temps perdu for the publisher Gallimard with 77 reproductions of aquarelles by the fauvist, Kees Van Dongen, made especially for this publication. Van Dongen’s aquarelles depict balls, seaside resorts, salons, large diners, gatherings of high society in public parks and on the avenues, and many splendid costumes. Van Dongen gifted several of the original aquarelle paintings to the Proust family and have recently come on the market.
Paul Bonet (1889-1971) – a French graphic designer and artist where for forty years, he designed covers for books, literature and philosophy. He is said to have been inspired by the artistic genres of twentieth-century art in France, like Art Nouveau, Cubism, Art Deco, Surrealism, and Geometric Abstractions. He referred to himself as an “essayist of bookbinding”. And he created over 550 bindings for the publisher Gallimard between 1941 to 1967.
* Translation from 3rd Volume Identification page:
The text of the present edition composed by Elzévir Ronaldson with titles and vignettes "Grasset" from the Deberny et Peignot foundry and was printed, as well as the reproductions of the seventy-seven watercolors by Van Dongen, on the presses of E. Desfosses- Néogravure, printer in Paris. The paper for the text and the hors-teste is Téka vellum. It was taken from the present edition, under the binding executed after the model of Paul Bonet, eight thousand seven hundred and fifty copies, of which, eight thousand five hundred numbered from I to 8,500, and two hundred and fifty hors commerce from 8,501 to 8.750. In addition, five hundred copies were printed specially reserved for the Librairie Générale Française, numbered from I to D. These copies are also bound after the model by Paul Bonet.
November 1, one thousand nine hundred and forty-seven.
Printed in France. Edition number 992. Legal deposit, 4th quarter 1947