{ feuilleton }

The cover picture of yesterday’s book purchase complements the month, being a woodcut by Leopold Stolba entitled February from a Ver Sacrum calendar for 1903. The book is Art Nouveau: Posters and Designs (1971), a collection edited by Andrew Melvin for the Academy Art Editions series and the book includes some covers for Jugend magazine which coincidentally was the subject of Monday’s post.

Ornamental letters from The Studio magazine, 1894; no artists credited.

I wrote about another of the books in the Academy series, The Illustrators of Alice, a couple of years ago and while I don’t really need yet another Art Nouveau book, the presence of a few illustrations I hadn’t seen before made the purchase worthwhile. Further examples follow.

The Three Musicians by Aubrey Beardsley from The Savoy (1896).

If I have a copy of this vignette in one of my many Beardsley volumes I haven’t been able to find it. The Savoy ran for eight issues from January to December 1896 and Beardsley was its art editor.

The Nimphidia and the Muses Elizium (1896) by Charles Ricketts from The Studio.

I do have this Ricketts illustration in a collection of the artist’s work but the reproduction isn’t as good as this. The illustration depicts Oberon, King of the Fairies, and was a frontispiece for a poem by Michael Drayton.

The Midnight Feast by Franz Wacik.

This curious picture was the biggest surprise. I’d not heard of Franz Wacik (1883–1938) before and the book frustrates by giving little information about him beyond saying he was one of the Viennese Secession artists and the drawing is a lithograph. He was also a book illustrator although it’s anyone’s guess what this illustrates. If you have a clue then please leave a comment.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Jugend Magazine
• Dorian Gray revisited
• The Illustrators of Alice