One of the more obscure artists from the Golden Age of the illustrated book, finding this volume by René Bull (1872–1942) makes up for my earlier dismissal of his Arabian Nights where the illustrations tend towards the comical. This volume dates from 1913, and shows Bull to be a fine exponent of Edwardian Orientalism. Browse [...]
Japanese poster (1982). At The Quietus Steve Earles looks back at John Carpenter’s visceral and uncompromising The Thing which exploded messily onto cinema screens thirty years ago. It’s always worth being reminded that this film (and Blade Runner in the same year) was considered a flop at the time following bad reviews and a poor [...]
Frontispiece, 1815. Engraved by Isaac Taylor after a drawing by Isaac Taylor Jr. After some time Vathek and Nouronihar perceived a gleam brightening through the drapery, and entered a vast tabernacle carpeted with the skins of leopards; an infinity of elders with streaming beards, and Afrits in complete armour, had prostrated themselves before the ascent [...]
The illustrations are by Willy Pogány, the forty-four fairy tales were collected and translated by Ignácz Kunos. This wasn’t the first edition of Kunos’s book which dates back to 1889, but Pogány’s edition must be one of the most heavily illustrated, with drawings in a variety of styles throughout. The tipped-in plates look like woodcuts [...]
Regeneration (2011) by Toshiyuki Enoki. Via. • HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, the art exhibition that caused such a fuss last year at the Smithsonian Institution, opens at the Brooklyn Museum, NYC, on November 18th. Among the events associated with the show is a screening of James Bidgood’s lusciously erotic Pink Narcissus. David [...]
Despite spending years tracking down the work of various illustrators I’ve never been as familiar with the major works of Maxfield Parrish as I might. I’ve seen a couple of the plates from this 1909 edition before but the majority are new discoveries. They’re as lucious as you’d expect from Parrish, and for once the [...]
The tip for this one came via Beautiful Century. Thomas Mackenzie (1887–1944) was a minor British illustrator whose work I hadn’t seen before, and if I’d seen the picture above uncredited I might have taken it for something by Kay Nielsen or Edmund Dulac. Mackenzie’s colour plates for the 1919 edition of Aladdin and His [...]
Invisible Light by Margo Selski. The Glass Garage Fine Art Gallery has an online collection of paintings by Margo Selski, many of which feature her cross-dressing son, Theo. Coilhouse profiled artist and model earlier in the week. Some of these paintings mix oil with beeswax which is something I’ve not come across before. • The [...]
Edmund Dulac. Empty, vast, and cold were the halls of the Snow Queen. The flickering flame of the northern lights could be plainly seen, whether they rose high or low in the heavens, from every part of the castle. In the midst of its empty, endless hall of snow was a frozen lake, broken on [...]
It’s the poster for the 1924 film version we’re concerning ourselves with here, not the more popular 1940 adaptation directed by Michael Powell. Both films are great but I have a special affection for Raoul Walsh’s silent version and this poster design has long been a favourite for the way it manages to condense the [...]
An illustration by René Bull (1872–1942) from The Russian Ballet (1913) by AE Johnson. Bull seems to be primarily known as one of the many illustrators of that Golden Age staple, The Arabian Nights, although his interpretation is a little too comical for my taste. You can judge for yourself here. Other Salomés turning up [...]
Yet another Internet Archive discovery, examples from a small book collection from 1907 of ex libris plates by Art Nouveau illustrator Louis Rhead (1857–1926). Rhead’s brightly-coloured poster art is often represented in Art Nouveau design books, less visible is his black-and-white work, some of which, like the example below, owes a clear debt to Aubrey [...]
Mother West Wind (1918). The first thought which comes to mind when looking at these beautiful prints is to wonder why American artist Bertha Lum isn’t more well-known, she had a particularly fondness for fluid lines and swirling arabesques as in the example above. There is at least a wealth of detail about her career [...]
Louis Rhead (1916). Continuing from the weekend’s book discovery, a browse at the Internet Archive reveals many scanned editions of the Arabian Nights. No surprise given the enduring popularity of the stories, and no surprise either that the texts are of variable quality, most of them diluted from the earthy and inventive originals to the [...]
This weekend’s book purchase looks like an expensive volume but was actually pretty reasonably-priced for a book that’s 126 years old. This is no. III of a three-volume set of the Thousand and One Nights translated by Edward William Lane, published by Chatto & Windus in 1883. I bought it mainly for the copious wood [...]
“Rosalie saw before her eyes a tree of marvellous beauty” from Old French Fairy Tales. Continuing the series of occasional posts mining the scanned library books at the Internet Archive, these illustrations are from a 1920 edition of Old French Fairy Tales by Comtesse Sophie de Ségur and a 1921 volume of Tanglewood Tales by [...]
Previous posts about etchings and engravings. • Doorways • Eustace details • The Library of Babel by Érik Desmazières • The labyrinth of Versailles • Atalanta Fugiens • Athanasius Kircher’s pyramids • The Royal Natural History by Richard Lydekker • Animating Piranesi • Melencolia details • Le style Louis XV • Sea and Land: An [...]
The Dynamiter: More New Arabian Nights (Longmans, London; 1914). I’ve mentioned before that I’m a sporadic collector of the Tusitala Edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s works, 35 small blue volumes published by Heinemann, London in 1924. I’ve found 15 of them so far and today turned up another one, volume 25, Virginibus Pueresque and Other [...]
“Everything about her was white.” Illustration by Edmund Dulac for The Dreamer of Dreams by Queen Marie of Roumania (1915). A major exhibition of British fantasy illustration opens at the Dulwich Picture Gallery this Wednesday, running to February 17th, 2008. Considering the huge resurgence of popularity in fantasy for children I’m surprised none of the [...]
Previous posts about illustrators. • The art of Ted Coconis • Dream Boats and Other Stories by Dugald Stewart Walker • Joseph Southall’s Bluebeard • Ezio Anichini postcards • Julius Klinger’s Sodom • René Bull’s Rubáiyát • Rackham silhouettes • Pamela Colman Smith’s Annancy Stories • The art of Henri Caruchet • George Barbier’s Falbalas [...]
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