FIEULLIEN, Bonaventure, père, illustrator. ~ Apocalypse. [Regniowez (Ardennes): Printed at the priory 1951].

Folio (375 × 325 mm), 3 parts, each of 12 handcoloured linocut plates (36 in total), each loose and uncut as issued in original wrappers, typed list of contents Covers slightly creased. Original box (split at joints). Contemporary bookplate (E.T.H.R. Vitmeur). From the books of the late Martin Stone (1946-2016).

FIRST EDITION, EACH OF THE THREE PARTS SIGNED AND HAND NUMBERED BY THE ARTIST, number 25 of 30 copies, each handcoloured by Madeleine Smets-Lefrancq. An extraordinarily dramatic graphic interpretation of Revelation, with linocuts by the Franciscan monk and sceptic Fieullien (1903-1976), who had studied at l’Académie de Bruxelles under the Belgian painter Oswald Poreau. He worked in sculpture, stained glass and paint, but his best work was in his remarkable illustrated books, with their idiosyncratic lettering and unsettling (occasionally lurid) religious imagery.