Hardcover album 387 x 300 mm, bound in orange half-calf over green paper with vertical black zig-zag and embossed gilt rings, by Isy Brachot of Brussels; includes a photographic portrait of D. H. Lawrence pasted to front green ffl verso, ms title-page, six pages of ms text with a woodcut portrait of the same to page 2, 27 plates (including eight double-page), one blank leaf followed by ten pages of ms text and back green ffl with text to recto, 49 leaves total, plates on thick wove paper, text on Canson & Montgolfier watermarked laid paper, all unpaginated; in a slipcase.

The title page indicates: “Vertés, a fashionable and popular designer from 1940 to 1960 […] attempted to illustrate in 1959 the famous novel by D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, but not getting along with his publisher, he sold his sketches for two thousand dollars to count Charles de Kerchove de Denterghem (1819 – 1882).

Further, the t.p. reads: Les esquisses, lit-on encore sur cette page, furent reliées par Isy Brachot de Bruxelles. Elles furent classées par lui sans ordre, comme elles venaient. En préface figurent un bref résumé du roman, un historique des difficultés qu’il connut, un compte rendu de sa victoire finale. En postface sont transcrits, en langue originale, les scènes illustrées par Vertès dans l’ordre où elles se trouvent écrites, ainsi qu’une appréciation de l’art de Vertès.

Michel Vokaer’s Bibliographie de Marcel Vertès (1967) does not mention this collection of sketches; however, it says that the artist had produced two test etchings for Lady Chatterley’s Lover around 1936, which remained unpublished.

The gouaches were drawn in the US, and the texts accompanying them are in English, so one could suppose that the prospective publisher—who remains unknown—was American.

Contributors:

Marcel Vertès [Marcell Vértes] (Jewish-Hungarian-French, 1895 – 1961)

David Herbert Lawrence (British, 1885 – 1930)