A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Illustrators
Meggendorfer’s Blatter, Meggendorfer’s Journal, a satirical magazine founded in 1886 by Lothar Meggendorfer. As with Punch and other humorous magazines of the era, much of the humour is lost today (even more so in a foreign tongue) but there’s some fine and stylish illustration on display.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• George Du Maurier’s Christmas Dream
• “Weirdsley Daubery”: Beardsley and Punch
• Simplicissimus
The classic absinthe poster from 1896 by Henri Privat-Livemont (1861–1936), one of the best exponents of the post-Mucha style. Don’t let anyone tell you that using unclad women’s bodies in advertising is a new thing.
And a couple more Mucha-esque examples circa 1900, both credited to “Nover”, from the wide selection of absinthe graphics at the Virtual Absinthe Museum.
The printer was L. Revon et Cie, situated in Paris at 93 Rue Oberkampf. The artist’s signature “Nover” is a mystery—no designer by that name is recorded. Since however the word is a palindrome of Revon, the assumption must be that the artist was Revon himself, or alternatively an anonymous employee of the firm. The same artist was responsible for the well-known Absinthe Vichet poster, also printed by Revon et Cie.
Interesting that so many of these posters show the women holding the glasses aloft as though receiving a libation from the gods. Privat-Livemont’s painting adds to the sacred effect by putting a halo behind the absinthe-bearer’s head.
Also at the Virtual Absinthe Museum is this warning against the dangers of the Green Fairy which would make a good addition to the Men with snakes post.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• 8 out of 10 cats prefer absinthe
• Smoke
• Flowers of Love
Continuing the theme of the fin de siècle feminine, there’s this bizarre (undated) piece by Marcel Lenoir representing…what? A witch? Some demoness? Or woman in general? Considering the often overt misogyny of the period, the latter interpretation is quite possible; there were more than enough artists prepared to see women as the foundation of all evil as well as place them on pedestals. In our post-Freudian age it’s impossible not to do a double-take at a picture of a bare-breasted woman gripping a pair of cocks…
Marcel Lenoir is yet another artist who receives scant attention online but I did find this nice magazine cover from an 1897 number of L’Image. There’s more splendid cover scans here.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Divine Sarah
• Carlos Schwabe’s Fleurs du Mal
• Empusa
• The art of Philippe Wolfers, 1858–1929
• The Masks of Medusa
‘We would gallop through Africa’ from A Dreamer’s Tales.
More from the book scans at the Internet Archive. Lord Dunsany was Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany and a writer of a number of fantasy tales beginning with The Gods of Pegana in 1905. His work is notable these days for having been a huge influence on the early stories of HP Lovecraft who once divided his literary output into his Poe pieces and his Dunsany pieces. Dunsany found an ideal illustrator in Sidney Sime who started out as a Beardsley pasticheur but developed his own slightly comical variant on the kind of exotica favoured by Edmund Dulac and Kay Nielsen.
Of the Dunsany/Sime books, Archive.org has The Sword of Welleran (1908), A Dreamer’s Tales (1910), The Book of Wonder (1912) and Tales of Wonder (1916). These stories are frequently too whimsical for my tastes—I’ve never been very keen on Lovecraft’s Dunsany pieces either—but they’re still worth a look for anyone interested in the lighter side of 20th century fantasy.
‘The City of Never’ from The Book of Wonder.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• HP Lovecraft’s favourite artists
top left: Bob Pepper (1969); right: David Johnston (1974).
bottom left: Mati Klarwein (1972); right: Gervasio Gallardo (1972).
I wrote about the classic line of fantasy paperbacks in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series last year as part of the post about Bob Pepper’s illustration:
It was the success of the publication of The Lord of the Rings in America which inspired Betty Ballantine to publish a line of fantasy classics in the late Sixties. The series began its run in 1969 and continued until 1974. Lin Carter was commissioned as editor and given free reign to choose any title he thought might be suitable with the result that many of the books in the series—obscurities such as Lud-in-the-mist by Hope Mirrlees—received their first paperback publication. Carter also reprinted personal favourites which frequently shifted from fantasy to outright horror, such as the titles from HP Lovecraft and William Hope Hodgson. The range and scope of this line is what makes the series so notable today and the books have become highly-collectable as a result.
I’m fairly sure this page of cover scans of the BAF series wasn’t there when I was searching for Pepper covers. Whether it was or not, it contains a lot of Bob Pepper artwork I hadn’t seen before at large size, plus a substantial number of the other covers. I was never all that taken with Gervasio Gallardo’s work which took the lion’s share of the illustration duties but the passage of time has lent his paintings and their florid title designs the distinction of being emblematic of the era. And some of the rest are still pretty decent covers.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
• The book covers archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Bob Pepper
• Fantastic art from Pan Books