Shazka Ob Ivanie-tsarevichie, Zhar-Ptitsie I o Sierom Volkie (Tale of Ivan the Tsar's Son, the Fire Bird, and the Gray Wolf)

St. Petersburg: Izd. Eksepditsii Zagotovieniia Gosudarstvennykh Bumag, 1901. First Edition. Folio. 12 pages in stiff pictorial wraps, Russian text. This copy has three full page color lithographic illustrations and four in text illustrations with the same rich colors. Ivan Bilibin after his studies in Munich with the Anton Azbe Art School became devoted to both simplicissmus and art nouveau. His work was at the Museum of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III where he stressed the power of Russian fairy tales. The illustrations in this work were completed in 1899 but not issued with the fairy tale until 1901. (this was the first in the series known as the Stazki. Besides his study of ancient Russian art, the was influenced both by Renaissance art and Japanese . Modern studies of his works appear in Jose Alinz, Komiks, comic art in Russia (2010), Janina Orlov's article in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales A-F and Maria Peitcheva's Ivan Bilibin: Drawings Colour Plates (2016). It is rare to have the original work with the richly colored lithographs. In addition, laid in is a 500 ruble note from the era with the image of Peter the Great, and on the right is an allegorical female figure, representing prosperity and order (from 1912 as in the Yale collection). A near fine copy in an exquisite specially designed clamshell box with a lift-out tray in a slipcase.