BERNARD (Valère). Guerro. Marseille], 1893-1895. - Album in-folio, 440 x 340 : (1 f.), 14 plates. In sheets, in the publisher's illustrated cardboard folder. Superb and rare album dedicated to Paul Gonzales, consisting of a text sheet including the poem Guerre en français made up of 11 stanzas, followed by 14 plates engraved with etching, soft varnish and sulphur by the painter and engraver Valère Bernard (1860-1936), i.e. a title, reproduced on the cardboard sleeve, a frontispiece, 11 plates illustrating each of the stanzas, and a cul-de-lampe. The text engraved on the plates, which includes the 11 stanzas of the poem, is written in Provençal. Guerro "often takes the Apocalypse as a model [...] This work, which will seem to some to be unbearably violent, sometimes even caricatured, earned him the honours of the great press, opened up the social salons and art galleries for him, and earned him the coveted esteem of Rops, Huysmans and Roger Marx. [...] For this series of highly original plates, Valère Bernard drank, we believe, from Goya's Disasters of War (republished in 1863). The techniques are comparable: etching and aquatint in Goya's work; etching, soft varnish, sulphur and sometimes aquatint in Valère's."(Jean-Roger Soubiran, Valère Bernard "Symbolist" (1860-1936), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille, 1981). Only 100 copies of this suite were printed, all of them apparently on Japanese paper. Each engraving is signed in graphite by the artist and the first one includes the justification of the print in Bernard's hand, also with his signature. The present copy is numbered 24, and complete copies are now very rare . Soiling and wear to the jacket, missing links.