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Balthus; Rainer Maria Rilke. Mitsou: Quarante Images par Baltusz.
Erlenbach-Zurich & Leipzig: Rotapfel-Verlag, 1921.
Quarto, original ivory boards, original glassine. Clamshell box. $6000.
First edition of the painter Balthus’s first book, the wordless true story of his
runaway cat, depicted in forty ink drawings.
Mitsou
was published when Balthus
was thirteen years old through the efforts of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who was
romantically entangled with Balthus’s mother. The accomplished expressionistic
drawings follow the stray Mitsou from her sudden appearance on a city bench,
through her days within the family circle, to her final disappearance, a blow that
left Balthus in tears. An elusive and shadowy figure in later life, Balthus would
famously title his own self-portrait “The King of Cats.” A stunning copy, with
Rilke’s preface in French.
Mitsou: Forty Images by Balthus.
New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984.
Octavo, original pictorial boards, original dust jacket. $75.
First American edition, in a smaller format, with Rilke’s preface in English.
“No longer able to see Mitsou, you bent your efforts to seeing her more clearly.
Is she still alive? She lives within you, and her insouciant kitten’s frolics that
once diverted you now compel you.”
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