BENOIS A.N. (1870-1960) Pushkin A.S. Mednyy vsadnik [The Bronze Horseman]; illustrated by A. Benois. Puschkin A. Der Reiter aus Erz. Munich: Orchis Verlag, 1922.

40 pp.: ill.; 24 x 16 cm. In German. Illustrations hand-coloured in watercolour. In the publisher’s illustrated boards and illustrated dust jacket. In very good condition. Minor rubbing, small tears and losses along the edges of the dust jacket. Benois worked on this cycle for many years. The first version of the illustrations appeared in 1903 (in Rome and St Petersburg); it was acquired by S.P. Diaghilev and published in the first issue of the journal ‘Mir iskusstva’ for 1904. In 1905, by then in Versailles, the artist reworked six of the earlier drawings and added a frontispiece. Benois created the final, third version of the cycle in 1916 and added new drawings in 1921-1922; it is this version that was published in Munich. The Orchis publishing house was founded by the Russian émigré Woldemar (Vladimir Frantsevich) Klein. The book appeared simultaneously in Russian and in German (translated by Johannes von Guenther).