Plus le coeur est noble, moins le col est roide by Georges Rouault
Plus le coeur est noble, moins le col est roide
Georges Rouault
Title
Plus le coeur est noble, moins le col est roide
Artist
Georges Rouault
1871 - 1958 (biography)Year
1926 , published in 1948
Technique
aquatint, etching, drypoint and roulette over heliogravure
Image Size
23 x 16 9/16" platemark
Signature
signed in plate, lower left image
Edition Size
450 (425 plus 25 hors commerce)
Annotations
Reference
Wofsey 156
Paper
antique-white laid Arches with "Ambroise Vollard" watermark
State
published
Publisher
Vollard and Editions de l'Etoile Filante, Paris
Inventory ID
19205
Price
$1,200.00
Description
Publisher Ambroise Vollard originally commissioned "Miserere et Guerre" to be about 100 images, but then backed off. Rouault worked the plates between 1916 and 1927. He recovered the plates from Vollard in 1947 and published "Miserere" with 58 plates and without André Suarès text. They were issued loose, in a cloth case. Many plates were worked as many as 15 times.
The title roughly translates to: "The more noble the heart, the less stiff the neck" and is a comment on the Prussian (German) military, whose stiff-necked, ignoble leaders were unable to see what was really happening. The subject might well be a satire of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, wearing a "pickelhaube", a spiked helmet, a stiffened collar and sporting a large mustache.