He Takes Her By Her Long Beautiful Hair (The Unfaithful Wife)

Plate 7 of 8 from the series 'Les Cantilènes', the title of a group of poems by Jean Moréas. This plate illustrates the lines in Moréas' poem 'La femme perfide' (The Unfaithful Woman) in the chapter 'Airs et Récits' : "Il la prend par sa belle et longue chevelure et lui tranche d'un coup la tête a l'énclure".
[Translation: He takes her by her beautiful and long hair and cut her head off with one strike"]
In 1891–92 Bernard worked on a series of hand-colored zincographs (planographic prints for which a zinc plate instead of a lithographic stone is used as a matrix) intended as illustrations for 'Les Cantilènes', a collection of forty lyrical poems in the medieval manner by the Symbolist author Jean Moréas, first published in 1886.
In 'Livre d'Art' during it's first year of publication (Numbers 2-3, May-July to August 15, 1892) the following announcement appeared: “On demande des souscripteurs pour un supplement exceptionnel du Livre d’Art se composant de 8 lithographies d’ E. Bernard destinées à illustrer Les Cantilènes de Jean Moréas…il sera tire 25 exemplaires numérotés et signés de l’auteur, du format du Livre d’Art sur papier Japon (365x270)"
The fully bound supplements promised in 1892 were never pulished by 'Livre d'Art'. The titles given to the works in the Morane catalogue raisonné are those that Bernard gave to the plates during the Jacques Doucet sale twenty years later.