Oscar Wilde – Page 19 – { feuilleton }

Wildeana 6

“The rich making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars were sitting at the gates.” Above and below: illustrations by Charles Robinson from The Happy Prince and Other Tales, an edition from 1920.

Continuing an occasional series. I’ve yet to see a copy of the recent annotated and unexpurgated edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray but Alex Ross wrote a marvellous essay for the New Yorker about the novel, its creation, its public reception, and Wilde’s decision to tone down the overt homoeroticism of its earlier drafts. This is one of the best pieces I’ve seen for a while about Wilde, replete with choice detail:

The gay strain in Wilde’s work is part of a larger war on convention. In the 1889 story “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.,” a pseudo-scholarly, metafictional investigation of Shakespeare’s sonnets to a boy, Wilde slyly suggests that the pillar of British literature was something other than an ordinary family man. In the 1891 play “Salomé,” Wilde expands a Biblical anecdote into a sumptuous panorama of decadence. Anarchists of the fin de siècle, especially in Germany, considered Wilde one of their own: Gustav Landauer hailed Wilde as the English Nietzsche. Thomas Mann expanded on the analogy, observing that various lines of Wilde might have come from Nietzsche (“There is no reality in things apart from their experiences”) and that various lines of Nietzsche might have come from Wilde (“We are basically inclined to maintain that the falsest judgments are the most indispensable to us”). Nietzsche and Wilde were, in Mann’s view, “rebels in the name of beauty.”

As for the novel, I’m feeling rather Dorian Grayed-out at the moment, having recently completed ten illustrations based on the story for a forthcoming anthology. More about that later.

Elsewhere, the William Andrews Clarke Memorial Library in Los Angeles has been running an exhibition, Oscar Wilde & the Visual Art(ists) of the Fin-de-Siecle, since July, and will continue to do so until the end of September. No word about what’s on display but this page on their website has details of their collection of Wilde materials which they say is the most comprehensive in the world.

Finally, the majority of visits to these pages in recent days have come from this post about Ivan Albright’s astonishing Dorian Gray painting in the Art Institute of Chicago. The post links to an earlier one of mine about the paintings used in Albert Lewin’s 1945 film of the book.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Oscar Wilde archive

The Worlds of Mervyn Peake

Illustration by Mervyn Peake for The Sphinx by Oscar Wilde (1949).

The centenary of writer, artist and poet Mervyn Peake is being celebrated this year with a number of events in the UK. Mervyn Peake: A Centenary Celebration is a small exhibition of Peake’s drawings which has been running since April at the Pallant House Gallery, Chichester. That show ends on July 17th so if you want to be glared at by Fuchsia Groan you’re advised to get your skates on.

The Worlds of Mervyn Peake is a more substantial affair opening this week at the British Library, London, which promises to have materials from the British Library collection and the Peake archive on display. Two evenings of talks are also scheduled although the first of these, Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, is now sold out. The Guardian ran a feature at the weekend with pieces by some of the people who’ll be involved in the discussions, including Michael Moorcock, who’s been championing Peake’s work since the early 1960s, and China Miéville. For those who can’t make it to the exhibitions, there are also books: The Gormenghast Trilogy has been republished in a new illustrated edition, and the British Library is selling an American edition of Maeve Gilmore’s Peake’s Progress, a 592-page selection of writings, drawings and poetry which has been out-of-print in the UK for years. Essential purchases for any Peake enthusiast.

Update: There’s also an exhibition of artwork by Mervyn Peake and Maeve Gilmore at Viktor Wynd, London. Thanks to Vadim for the tip.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• A profusion of Peake
• Joseph Cavalieri’s stained glass
• Mervyn Peake at Maison d’Ailleurs
• Peake’s Pan
• Buccaneers #1
• Mervyn Peake in Lilliput
• The Illustrators of Alice

Rossetti and His Circle by Max Beerbohm

Rossetti’s name is heard in America (Oscar Wilde).

The Happy Hypocrite was Max Beerbohm’s words illustrated by George Sheringham; here we have Beerbohm’s caricatures from a 1922 collection depicting notable figures among the Aesthetes and Pre-Raphaelites from the 1860s on. Beerbohm wasn’t born until 1872 so there’s something of a younger generation’s mockery in these drawings. That said, he was just as happy to mock his London friends of the 1890s, Oscar Wilde included, and often poked fun at himself in his cartoons and his writings.

Some of the pictures in Rossetti and His Circle are familiar from books about the period, the Wilde picture in particular is often reprinted. You don’t always see them in colour, however, so once again the scans at the Internet Archive give us a fuller view provided you ignore the security perforations on each print.

Blue China (JM Whistler and Thomas Carlyle).

A drawing which complements Wilde’s description of Whistler as a “miniature Mephistopheles”. Beerbohm was more succinct in one of his verbal portraits: “Tiny”.

Algernon Swinburne taking his great new friend Gosse to see Gabriel Rossetti.

Swinburne, it seems, was another diminutive figure.

The sole remark likely to have been made by Benjamin Jowett about the mural paintings at the Oxford Union: “And what were they going to do with the Grail when they found it, Mr. Rossetti?”

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Happy Hypocrite by Max Beerbohm

Valenti Angelo’s Salomé

And still they come… Valenti Angelo (1897–1982) was an American printmaker, author of several books for children and the illustrator of an estimated 250 classic works of fiction including this 1945 edition of Wilde’s Salomé for Heritage Press. Angelo has an engagingly simple style in this and other works, reminding me of David Sheridan’s Tarot designs. The Internet Archive has a copy of his illustrated The Imitation of Christ with drawings reminscent of Eric Gill’s woodcuts.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
• The Oscar Wilde archive
• The Salomé archive

Wild Salomés

So there’s a poster for Al Pacino’s forthcoming drama-documentary about the Oscar Wilde play but I’ve yet to see any release details. The tagline connects Salomé with The Ballad of Reading Gaol: “We kill the thing we love.”

Searching around for posters turned up this item for an Italian-French co-production of the Wilde play directed by Claude d’Anna. I’ve not seen this but it can’t be any worse than Ken Russell’s version so it may be worth seeking out.

Far better poster-wise is this splendid creation by Anselmo Ballester for the Italian release of the 1953 Hollywood film (which isn’t based on the play). Rita Hayworth was too old for the role, and the film is simultaneously lavish and dull in the way that so many sword-and-sandal epics manage to be, but the poster is a gem. This site has many more examples of Ballester’s poster art.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Oscar Wilde archive
• The Salomé archive