Archive for the 'Drawing on the Past'

Work: The Five Jars by M.R. James
(Edward Arnold & Co., 1922)

Artist: Gilbert James

The Five Jars is subtitled "Being More or Less of a Fairy Tale Contained in a Letter to a Young Person." Its author M.R. James is better known as a writer of ghost stories for adults. Whether or not the story is truly intended for young people is a matter of opinion. The whimsical drawings by Gilbert James seem to imply that it is. A mix of the fanciful, the creepy, and the bizarre the story would appeal to any reader who appreciates the outre and the supernatural in fiction.

Once available only in its original rare 1st edition or the somewhat scarcer 1927 reprint (a copy of which I own and is pictured above) The Five Jars has been extensively reprinted in a variety of hardback and paperback editions. Numerous POD and eBooks make it even easier for anyone interested in reading the light and fanciful tale.

Below a sampling of the seven illustrations by James.  I found little on the artist other than that he illustrated in full color an edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (L. C. Page, 1899).

Click to enlarge any of the pictures below for better viewing.

It's the 158th anniversary of the birth of one of my idols -- Oscar Wilde. Ages ago (when I was still in high school!) I wrote my first thematic analogy paper that examined the similarities between The Picture of Dorian Gray and Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Little did I know that essay would eventually lead me into a world of similar content comparisons in crime and supernatural fiction. It seems to have become my trademark as anyone who reads this blog may have already discovered.
In honor of Oscar's natal anniversary I offer up a variety of illustrations from his brilliant tale of terror and crime.

We start with the thoroughly aged and corrupted portrait as revealed in the final scenes from the 1945 movie adaptation starring Hurd Hatfield, George Sanders and Angela Lansbury. I believe this color photo was taken as a screen capture from the extras available on the DVD.  The film itself is in black and white and yet I found several color photos of Hatfield's portrait both before and after the transformation.


Next, a young illustrator and art student who goes by the web name of "spyders".  This brilliantly realized version was found at the website DeviantArt.


This one is by artist Stephen Alcorn as part of a series of relief block prints interpreting literary characters.


The Dell paperback version from the 1950s. The artist got it completely backwards here. Strange.


Another cartoon interpretation.  I was unable to identify the artist or its source.


From a graphic novel version of the book as retold and illustrated by Ian Edgington and Ian Culbard:


Artist Dan Hipp's idea for a cover on a non-existent edition of Wilde's novel.

Basil Hallward and Dorian admire the portrait before it begins its gruesome transformation. Taken from an illustrated edition, neither publisher nor artist was attributed on the website where I found it.  For shame.


And finally...a publicity still from one of the most infamous (and horrible) movie versions. An utterly wrong adaptation of the tale set in mod 1970 starring Helmut Berger and including various absurd sex scenes and lots of nudity. I like to think that Oscar would most likely have found this movie version  hysterically funny.

Work: The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles G. Finney
Publisher: Ben Abramson, 1945 (a reissue of the 1935 1st)
Artist: Boris Artzybasheff (1899 - 1965)

I first came to know of the work of Boris Artzybasheff through his dust jacket illustrations for Doubleday Doran's Crime Club mystery novel imprint. He did nearly every book of Clyde Clason's as well DJs for books by Stuart Palmer, Todd Downing and Aaron Marc Stein.  Those are the few who I can think of off the top of my head.  I'm sure there are more.

I always thought his trademark was fantastic surrealism. But he is a talented artist of many moods and styles. He illustrated several children's books and even wrote a few of his own. Writing must be in the family genes -- his father was noted novelist Mikhail Artzybasheff.

In my exhausting internet research on Boris (there is a wealth of info out there) I discovered a huge portion of his work was done for Time magazine.  Between 1941 and 1965 he did 215 covers, a mix of bizarre mechanical nightmares, humorous surreal illustrations, and surprisingly realistic portraits.  Among the more famous are his portraits are Josef Stalin, jazz musician/composer Dave Brubeck, and mystery writer Craig Rice.

For this post I have chosen some of his vividly imagined, other worldly drawings. To me it's very reminiscent of the artwork of Hannes Bok of Weird Tales fame. The illustrations below are taken directly from an illustrated edition I own of The Circus of Dr. Lao, the allegorical fantasy by Charles G Finney.  It became a very different story in the 1964 movie retitled The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao with Tony Randall in the title role(s).  Click on images for full appreciation.

You can find all sorts of information about this artist all over the internet. But I recommend starting here for the best variety of his artwork.

The endpapers

Work: Dr. Nikola by Guy Boothby
Publisher: Ward Lock, 1902 - a later edition
Artist: Stanley L. Wood (1867 - 1928)

To me Stanley Wood will always be remembered for the iconic portrait of Dr. Nikola. I know you've seen it. It's what I use as my avatar over there to the right in the "About Me" section on this blog.  What surprised me was all the other work he is better known for.

Born in Monmouthshire in 1867 Wood traveled with his father a cement manufacturer to America in 1878. The family settled on a ranch in the Ute Indians territory of what would soon become Kansas. There is an amusing anecdote about how Wood's mother tried to ward off the Ute Indians when he husband died.  You can read it here. Soon after her husband's death, Charlotte Wood took her children back to England.  It was in London that Stanley became an illustrator for newspapers and magazines.

In 1888 he was sent to South Dakota by The Illustrated London News where he was better able to study the geography to give his work more authenticity.  Three examples of his western art can be found here, here, and here. From an art gallery website I learned this about Wood:

Book dealer Jefferson Chenoweth Dykes ...wrote in Fifty Great Western Illustrators that “no better horse artist ever lived than Stanley L. Wood - there was more action in a Stanley Wood illustration than in the story itself".

Later in his career Wood would also become well known for his military illustrations.  There are several websites devoted to displaying his work in this genre.  You can visit one of the best ones here.

Below are some excellent examples of Wood's work taken form Dr. Nikola (originally published in 1896), the second novel about one of the first master criminals in all of fiction. As always, be sure to click on each picture in the tables to enlarge for full appreciation.

Work: Ladies in Hades by Frederic Arnold Kummer
(J. H. Sears & Co., 1928)
First American Edition

Artist: Gordon Ross (1872 - 1946)

I can find little biographical data on artist Gordon Ross, but a list of his work found in books is plentiful. Mostly his paintings and drawings turn up in various volumes of The Heritage Press and The Limited Edition Club, two subscription only book clubs started by publisher George Macy. The book clubs specialized in illustrated volumes of classic works of fiction and non-fiction. To this day are still a big hit with collectors -- mostly because of the art work.

Unlike what I am posting here today some of Ross' best work was done in color and can be found in such works as The Pickwick Papers (Heritage Club, 1938), The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent (Heritage Press, 1939), and The Sir Roger de Coverly Papers (Limited Edition Club, 1945). Also you can find his work in The Children's Munchausen (Houghton Mifflin, 1921), and a color DJ for Pony Jungle (Doubleday Doran, 1941), a children's book by Lavinia Davis.

Ross was born in Scotland in 1872. As a teenager he sailed to San Francisco where he studied painting and drawing at the Mark Hopkins Art Institute. He worked in the art department of the San Francisco Chronicle until 1904. Sometime in the late 1900s he moved to New York where he focused on book illustration. He died in New York City, the day after Christmas, in 1946. His work continues to show up in auction records year after year and sells well.

Below are the comic illustrations from a satiric novel by Frederic Arnold Kummer about the "wicked women of history" including Lillith, Salome and Delilah from the Old Testament; Cleopatra, Sappho, Helen of Troy from ancient history; and Lucretia Borgia from the Renaissance. The novel is subtitled "A Story of Hell's Smart Set." I've included the captions for each picture to give you an idea of the smart ass kind of writing to be found in the book.

And a little about the author (which I rarely do in this feature that's supposed to be about the artist): Kummer wrote plays, the books to musicals and musical revues, straight novels, and humor, but I tend to know him as a writer of several crime and adventure novels. He began writing genre fiction which was serialized in pulp magazines under the pseudonym Arnold Fredericks. Kummer then dropped that and used his own name for his final two detective novels The Scarecrow Murders and The Twisted Face featuring Judge Henry Tyson (soon to be reviewed here).

As usual I suggest you click on the photos to enlarge for better appreciation. I don't use that slide show feature, so clicking will give you a very nice sized photo.  Plus, you can't read the often funny captions unless you enlarge. So click away!