{illustrators} – Page 67

John Batten’s Indian Fairy Tales

I keep intending to write some longer pieces, including a review of Aleksei German’s unforgettable Hard To Be A God, but the workload has been heavy again so here’s another illustrated book.

Illustrations by John Dickson Batten (1860–1932) have appeared here before, all of them for collections of fairy tales compiled and adapted by Joseph Jacobs. Indian Fairy Tales (1892) is another Batten/Jacobs collaboration, and is as fine as their other books, with Batten enclosing many of his full-page drawings in elaborate frames. Most of the figures look nothing like Indian people but that’s standard for books of this period. The Internet Archive has several copies of this title, including a limited, numbered copy with hand-coloured illustrations. I prefer the illustrations in black-and-white, however, so that’s what you see here.

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The art of Erhard Amadeus Dier, 1893–1969

This is the third time this drawing has appeared here but the first time I’ve been able to fully credit the artist. Walpurgisnacht appeared in issue 604 (April 26, 1917) of Austrian humour magazine Die Muskete. Dier was Austrian, and contributed to many issues of Die Muskete around this time, always credited as “Amadeus” hence the difficulty in tracing his identity. Most of the other magazine illustrations I’ve seen are a lot less memorable than this one; as I’ve said before, Walpurgisnacht could easily have been drawn in 1971. The erotic qualities of the drawing may be deliberate if the attribution of a pornographic series (see below) is accurate. I’ve not been able to find authoritative confirmation for this so don’t take my word for it.

Big thanks to Kuinesis for sending the solution to this mystery. The drawings above and below are also from Die Muskete, and via Kuinesis’s Tumblr, as is one of the bookplates.

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Hugo Steiner-Prag’s Ghostly Ballads

Mountain Voices.

In which the illustrator of Gustav Meyrink’s The Golem illustrates six ballads or lieder by Heinrich Heine. These etchings don’t bear comparison to Steiner-Prag’s peerless Golem illustrations, or those for his illustrated Poe, but they’re good to see even if the meaning remains obscure.

Man Behind a Window.

The Dream.

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The art of Alan Odle, 1888–1948

The Malicious Satyr.

Following yesterday’s post, a little more about British illustrator Alan Odle. A cursory search between work sessions today yielded a variety of Odle drawings but not the illustrated edition of Candide I was hoping for. The examples here are all taken from Pinterest, and I believe the ones towards the end are from Candide but that’s only a guess. In a reversal of the usual state of affairs, Odle’s career has been overshadowed by that of his wife, Dorothy M. Richardson, a Modernist novelist of some note. But the neglect has been addressed recently with the publication in 2012 of a monograph, The Life and Work of Alan Odle by Martin Steenson. Mark Valentine reviewed the book at Wormwoodiana. Some of Odle’s drawings are for sale at the Victor Arwas and Chris Beetles galleries.

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Harry Clarke and others in The Studio

The Swing by Alan Odle.

The University of Heidelberg has for some time now had several years of British art magazine The Studio in its archive but I’ve yet to delve fully into the later issues. These illustrations are from two articles from the volumes covering the year 1925, both of which feature the exceptional Irish artist Harry Clarke. In the first piece Clarke is present along with two contemporaries, John Austen and Alan Odle; the second is a review by novelist Dorothy M. Richardson (Alan Odle’s wife) of Clarke’s illustrations for Goethe’s Faust. All three artists owed an artistic debt to Aubrey Beardsley, and an earlier number of The Studio features a drawing by John Austen of Scheherazade in his Beardsley-derived style. (Thanks to Nick for the tip!)

Columbine by Harry Clarke.

Atalanta in Calydon by John Austen.

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