Eric Pape’s Arabian Nights

Eric Pape (1870–1938) was an American artist and illustrator who shouldn’t be confused with his contemporary Frank C. Papé, a Briton who was also a popular illustrator. Pape was more of a fine artist—he studied in Paris under Jean-Léon Gérôme—whose magazine illustrations are of that type that favoured realistic scenes using posed models. The illustrations in The Arabian Nights Tales of Wonder and Magnificence (1923) differ enough from his paintings to be taken for the work of another artist, the book being a substantial volume which Pape fills with many full-page ink drawings replete with stippling and detail.

The stories are a retelling by Padraic Colum with an eye to maintaining the flavour of the original (or older) texts. Books like this were aimed at a young readership but Colum begins with an introduction that describes the origin of the tales, and also weighs the pros and cons of the translations by Lane and Burton. In the stories he avoids simplifying the names of the more popular characters, so we have the six voyages of “El-Sindibad of the Sea”, and the tale of “Ala-ed-din” and his wonderful lamp. These gestures of fidelity are matched by Pape’s vignettes, many of are borrowed from Arabian or Persian sources. Pape had spent two years living and working in Egypt—his painting of the Sphinx by moonlight was a product of this period—a factor which may explain why he was offered the commission.

The pictures I’ve selected are mostly the full-page pieces which I’ve adjusted slightly to remove the grey tone of the paper. This copy of the book is a reprint from 1945, a period when print standards suffered from wartime restrictions. Older printings may be better.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Maxfield Parrish’s Arabian Nights
• Thomas Mackenzie’s Aladdin
• More Arabian Nights
• Edward William Lane’s Arabian Nights Entertainments