Eduardo Núñez J. Peñasco; Valeriano Salas [Compiler and Ed.]

Roberto Domingo: Maestro de la Luz y el Movimiento [Roberto Domingo: Master of Light and Movement]

Madrid: Revista Geografica Española, 1958. Very Good. Item #6067

Madrid: Revista Geografica Española, 1958. Octavo; unpaginated [220pp in this copy, see full description]. Tipped-in sepia frontispiece; 38 full-color tipped-in plates; 56 full-page B&W photogravure reproductions of paintings; 24 full-page B&W reproductions of drawings; 67 smaller B&W drawing reproductions (1/4, 1/2, or 3/4 page) embedded within text. Entirely in Spanish.

Dust jacket printed in red and black on off-white, with Domingo drawings reproduced on front and back. Jacket spine is nude, as published. Terracotta red cloth; gilt lettering on spine and gilt signature stamped on front panel. Textblock composed of three alternating stocks of paper for three different modes of art reproduction: matte uncoated (for text and drawings); matte polished (for photogravure gatherings); matte heavy gray stock (for tipped-in color). Note that all three stocks are sewn into the gatherings: the heavy gray stock is not tipped in, though color plates are tipped onto it.

Dust jacket tanned at all edges and spine. Segment missing (1/4") at crown of spine and tiny strip missing at foot. Inscribed on front free endpaper by compiler/editor: "To Mr. Philip Bonsal with my best wishes for 1962, Valeriano Salas, Madrid 1° de Enero 1962." Recipient Philip Bonsal served as United States Ambassador to Cuba from February 1959 through the beginning of the Castro regime in 1960.

An indeterminate number of pages and illustrations are missing from the end of chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3. Given the three paper stocks bound in, it could be one folded leaf; it could be several. Gatherings around the lacuna appear to be normal, and the lack of any pagination or table of illustrations prevents discerning between a publishing error and later excision.

Roberto Domingo (1883-1956) was one of the most celebrated bullfight painters of the 20th century. His painting "Toros" is on the dust jacket of the first American edition of "Death in the Afternoon." Hemingway also had several of his works in his Finca Vigia home in Cuba. Domingo's dashing, painterly style sits somewhere between the thrilling brushwork of John Singer Sargent (at one end) and Giovanni Boldini (at the other), both overlapping contemporaries for much of Domingo's career, which began in Paris.

Valeriano Salas (1898-1962), the compiler and editor of this tribute volume, appears to have created the text—amply enhanced by 185+ reproductions in this copy—out of material previously published in the Revista Geografica Española, of which he was the editor. The Museo Legado Valeriano Salas in Salamanca is named after him. The credited author of the text in this volume, Don Núñez J. Peñasco (1872-1934), himself a painter, died 24 years before his writings about Domingo were, it seems, repurposed for this volume by Salas. Did Sr. Salas know that he was inscribing a defective copy of the book to the American ambassador to Cuba in 1962? Was he placing a bet the ambassador would never notice? Misterio sobre misterio—but the paintings are impressive nonetheless.

Price: $125.00