Square 4to (31 x 30.1 cm). 16 pp. Blank leaf with limitation to verso, text leaf, and 6 plates by Paul Iribe each with verse by Jean Cocteau. Publisher's wrappers printed in red and black, sewn with the original black thick thread. First edition, limited to 1,000 copies on Japon, with six full-page black and white illustrations by Iribe. This is one of 934 un-numbered copies. Some wear and soiling to the wrappers including a light corner crease and small area of skinning to the rear wrapper, small stain to the interior corner edge throughout(not affecting any illustrations), otherwise very good. Very scarce. Reference: James Williams, Jean Cocteau, Reaktion Books, 2008, p. 46; Philip T. A. Johnston, "Vaslav Nijinsky", Encyclopedia of Modern Europe: Europe 1789-1914, 2018.

First edition of Cocteau's "veritable love letter to Nijinsky" (Williams), this stunning collection of six reproduced drawings of Nijinsky by the important French illustrator and designer Paul Iribe, each paired with a line by Jean Cocteau. "Nijinsky fascinated Cocteau most on account of his potent mixture of animality and fragility, at once desirable and androgynous, half-angel and half-leopard. He presented for Cocteau a unique, hybrid spectacle of desire, pain and sacrifice" (Williams). 

Cocteau's paeans to his art are here printed as single lines to caption six full-page engravings by the French illustrator and designer Paul Iribe, depicting Nijinsky in Giselle and Shéhérazade. Iribe worked in Hollywood during the Twenties and was Coco Chanel's lover from 1931 to his death. The couturier Paul Poiret recognized Iribe’s talent and brought him in to create drawings, which would compellingly represent the new models in his collection. These illustrations were later compiled into an album, ”Les Robes de Paul Poiret racontée par Paul Iribe” published in 1908. The book created a controversy, as Poiret’s design aesthetic promoted clothing with a relaxed line, emphatically denouncing the corseted look so long in vogue as the mandated female silhouette. In “Portraits-Souvenirs,” Jean Cocteau made a wry observation: “Iribe’s album disgusts mothers.”