Happy birthday Henry

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The Sunworshipper (To the Morning Sun) (1904).

Thanks to Mr Jahsonic for noting the 150th anniversary of the birth of Henry Scott Tuke (1858–1929). The current exhibition of his paintings at the art gallery in Falmouth, where he lived and worked, labels him a British Impressionist, avoiding mention of his status as principal painter among the loose collection of Victorian and Edwardian artists and writers known as the Uranians. Tuke’s beach scenes present a hazy vision of sun-drenched adolescent homoeroticism with a quality rarely seen in gay art today. This site has the best online selection of his pictures.

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Noonday Heat (1902).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive

Reynard the Fox

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Reineke Fuchs, Einband der Ausgabe des Versepos von Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1846).

From Wikimedia Commons’ stock of images related to the medieval trickster hero, and another great cover showing the 19th century art of the blocked binding. In a similar vein, don’t miss these marvellous illustrations at BibliOdyssey.

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Reineke als Sieger by Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1846).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive
• The book covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Old book covers
• Decorated Russian book covers
• The Hetzel editions of Jules Verne

Albert Kahn’s Autochromes

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“Lying on a raised dais, this woman may have been the concubine of an affluent opium smoker.” (1915)

In 1909 the millionaire French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn embarked on an ambitious project to create a colour photographic record of, and for, the peoples of the world. As an idealist and an internationalist, Kahn believed that he could use the new Autochrome process, the world’s first user-friendly, true-colour photographic system, to promote cross-cultural peace and understanding. More.

More Albert Kahn Autochromes and similar early views in colour at this Flickr pool.

Update: And there’s The Wonderful World of Albert Kahn, site and book.

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The Palais du Trocadéro from the Eiffel Tower (1912).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Palais du Trocadéro
• The Dawn of the Autochrome
• German opium smokers, 1900