About this Item
In Portuguese. Possible First Edition. No listed date of publication. The only copy for sale on the book sites that I check. 'Organized by the Porto School of Fine Arts. Graphic Execution Of The National Lithography Of Porto.' You can see the covers in the photos. They are clean. The front and rear covers do have some small scratches and scuffs. On the spine there is a closed tear going through the letters 'A' and 'M' in the word 'Memoriam'. There is one other imperfection on the front cover: there is one tiny circular hole (possibly the work of a long-dead sculpting insect) that you should be able to see just under (and between) the letters 'E' and 'M' in 'Memoriam'. The little fella was no dilettante. He stuck with his project all the way to the end, in other words he only moved on after he had emerged through the rear cover. I (as the seller) prefer to look at this tiny hole as the angelic imprint of a fellow artistic traveler. Could this singularly rare book be any more unique? And he answered yes, I will give it yet another distinction. So the very tiny hole can be seen on every single page, and there are absolutely no other such holes or indications of angelic visitations. The pages are, in fact, otherwise in excellent condition (there are 145 pages of text followed by a seven-page bibliography which is itself followed by XXXI pages of the artist's works. There's also a one page Index, one reference page titled Colocação Das Gravuras (No Texto), another identically titled (Fora Do Texto), and one page titled Desenhos (Graphics). The book ends with a page paying tribute to the institutions that made the book possible. As I said, the pages are in excellent condition. They are very clean (I saw literally only a few tiny spots). There is a small crease just off the middle of the top edges of the first 50 or so pages. It begins pretty small and gets smaller and smaller as the pages move along. I didn't see any other creasing. There are no turned-down or placeholder corner creases. There are no markings anywhere in the book. There are no attachments. And no one has written their name or anything else anywhere. There is one other thing that I would bring to your attention: while the book is decently bound (I've been scrolling through it without creating any issues) there are cracks or spaces at the junctures between around a half a dozen of the latter pages in the book beginning with the section of the reproductions. None of these pages are detached. They all appear to be solidly bound to one another, that is the ones following them or the ones preceding them, but I can't promise that some detachment won't occur in the future. I would say that it doesn't feel like that will happen, particularly if one is very careful with the handling of the book. The text pages are almost all pretty tight at their junctures, but I did find two or three instances here as well where there was a thin space at the juncture between facing pages, although over only part of the juncture. Finally, both the front and rear inside covers have pulled away a bit from where they are attached to the spine. Both could be very easily glued back to be tight against the spine. That really doesn't appear to be an issue of any significance. Both covers are very solidly bound. 'António Soares dos Reis studied at the Portuense Academy of Fine Arts. He also studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he won several prizes, and in Rome. It was there that he executed his finest work, in Carrara marble, the acclaimed "O Desterrado" ("The Exiled"), the masterpiece of Portuguese sculpture. After returning to Portugal, he returned to Porto, where he taught at the Portuguese Academy of Fine Arts. Misunderstood and little credited in life, he committed suicide, at 41. He is considered, by far, one of the leading names in Portuguese realist sculpture. The finest collection of his pieces can be seen at the National Museum Soares dos Reis, in Porto.'. Seller Inventory # 003102
Contact seller
Report this item
