{"id":21020,"date":"2021-11-01T17:27:50","date_gmt":"2021-11-01T16:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=21020"},"modified":"2021-11-02T01:40:54","modified_gmt":"2021-11-02T00:40:54","slug":"byam-shaws-illustrated-poe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2021\/11\/01\/byam-shaws-illustrated-poe\/","title":{"rendered":"Byam Shaw’s illustrated Poe"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"shaw01.jpg\"<\/p>\n

There’s always more Poe. Selected Tales of Mystery<\/em><\/a> was published in 1909, and is one of several illustrated editions produced by British artist Byam Shaw (1872\u20131919), a painter like Frederick Simpson Coburn who was better suited to the one-off canvas than the illustrated text. There ought to be a term for this kind of illustration\u2014”The Easel School”, perhaps\u2014in which all the techniques and staging of the academic artist are applied to stories or novels, techniques which too often lead to a succession of well-painted figures gesticulating to each other in well-painted rooms. The canvas painter in the first years of the 20th century was also subject to the limitations of print technology which at the time could only reproduce a narrow range of colours.<\/p>\n

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William Wilson<\/em><\/p>\n

The question of how best to illustrate a story using realism rather than stylistisation has been a recurrent one recently with regard to a commission of my own. I’ll be discussing this later but something that occurred to me while considering the issue was that illustrators today have access to a visual vocabulary derived from cinema that didn’t really exist until the 1920s. An artist like Byam Shaw would never think to depict a scene from a very high or very low angle, even though high- and low-angle views of dramatic scenes had been familiar to theatre audiences for many centuries. (He does<\/em> use a high angle for A Descent into the Maelstr\u00f6m<\/em> but so do most artists who illustrate that particular story.) Virgil Finlay’s 1952 illustration for The Tell-Tale Heart<\/em><\/a> is a cinematic view with its combination of flattened perspective and deep focus. In the same issue of Fantastic<\/em> there’s an illustration by Gaylord Welker<\/a> that could be a still from any film noir of the 1940s.<\/p>\n

\"shaw03.jpg\"<\/p>\n

The Gold Bug<\/em><\/p>\n

Reservations aside, Shaw’s Poe is worth a look if only to see which moments he chooses to highlight from each of the stories…or those he doesn’t. One of the problems with illustrating a popular writer like Edgar Allan Poe is that you have the choice of attempting to compete with other artists by illustrating the same scene as everybody else or you avoid the obvious moments in favour of something new. Shaw had an advantage in working without the burden of precedent but his climax for The Masque of the Red Death<\/em> is overwhelmed today by our acquaintance with Harry Clarke’s definitive illustration<\/a>. The most original thing about the Shaw edition is its cover, with a trail of human and animal footprints spiralling into a maelstr\u00f6m towards…what? A webbed foot? This curious design suggests a set of illustrations that the contents don’t deliver.<\/p>\n

\"shaw04.jpg\"<\/p>\n

The Fall of the House of Usher<\/em><\/p>\n

\"shaw05.jpg\"<\/p>\n

The Assignation<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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Ligeia<\/em><\/p>\n

\"shaw07.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Eleonora<\/em><\/p>\n

\"shaw08.jpg\"<\/p>\n

The Masque of the Red Death<\/em><\/p>\n

\"shaw09.jpg\"<\/p>\n

The Cask of Amontillado<\/em><\/p>\n

\"shaw.10jpg\"<\/p>\n

Metzengerstein<\/em><\/p>\n

\"shaw11.jpg\"<\/p>\n

The Pit and the Pendulum<\/em><\/p>\n

\"shaw12.jpg\"<\/p>\n

A Descent into the Maelstr\u00f6m<\/em><\/p>\n

\"shaw13.jpg\"<\/p>\n

MS. Found in a Bottle<\/em><\/p>\n

\"shaw14.jpg\"<\/p>\n

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar<\/em><\/p>\n

\"shaw15.jpg\"<\/p>\n

The Murders in the Rue Morgue<\/em><\/p>\n

\"shaw16.jpg\"<\/p>\n

The Black Cat<\/em><\/p>\n

\"shaw17.jpg\"<\/p>\n

The Spectacles<\/em><\/p>\n

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The illustrators archive<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The Purloined Eidolon<\/a>
\n\u2022 Martin van Ma\u00eble\u2019s illustrated Poe<\/a>
\n\u2022 Narraciones extraordinarias by Edgar Allan Poe<\/a>
\n\u2022 Fritz Eichenberg\u2019s illustrated Poe<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope<\/a>
\n\u2022 Hugo Steiner-Prag\u2019s illustrated Poe<\/a>
\n\u2022 Burt Shonberg\u2019s Poe paintings<\/a>
\n\u2022 Illustrating Poe #5: Among the others<\/a>
\n\u2022 Illustrating Poe #4: Wilfried S\u00e4tty<\/a>
\n\u2022 Illustrating Poe #3: Harry Clarke<\/a>
\n\u2022 Illustrating Poe #2: William Heath Robinson<\/a>
\n\u2022 Illustrating Poe #1: Aubrey Beardsley<\/a>
\n\u2022 Poe at 200<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Tell-Tale Heart from UPA<\/a>
\n\u2022 William Heath Robinson\u2019s illustrated Poe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s always more Poe. Selected Tales of Mystery was published in 1909, and is one of several illustrated editions produced by British artist Byam Shaw (1872\u20131919), a painter like Frederick Simpson Coburn who was better suited to the one-off canvas than the illustrated text. There ought to be a term for this kind of illustration\u2014”The … Continue reading “Byam Shaw’s illustrated Poe”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New blog post: Byam Shaw's illustrated Poe","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,42,4,22,48],"tags":[3751,93,11880,99,1895],"class_list":["post-21020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-design","category-horror","category-illustrators","tag-byam-shaw","tag-edgar-allan-poe","tag-gaylord-welker","tag-harry-clarke","tag-virgil-finlay"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-5t2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}