This ex libris, or bookplate, by Louise Bourgeois, accompanied a 2005 artist's edition of the book Recueil des Secrets de Louyse Bourgeois (1635) as part of Salon Verlag’s Ex Libris series. In this series, publisher Gerhard Theewen invited artists to reprint books that had influenced their work, each with a new cover and personalised bookplate. Bourgeois selected this rare seventeenth century text by a French midwife who shared her name – Louyse Bourgeois. The midwife, renowned for serving as the royal midwife to Queen Maria de Medici, was among the first women to write about childbirth and female health.
“This book was originally published in Paris in 1635 and is about a midwife who has my name. I am interested in the Mother and Child relationship and how it relates to emotions later in life.”
—Louise BourgeoisBourgeois' bookplate, a lithographic print related to her 2004 project The Reticent Child, complements the historical text with its evocative depiction of a foetus curled within the mother’s body. With its soft colours and intimate perspective, the image resonates deeply with the book’s themes, reflecting the connection and shared legacy between the artist and midwife, as well as Bourgeois' wider explorations of motherhood and the female body across her oeuvre.
