Surfing the image archives in the Public Domain can be very tedious and uneventful. Mostly you find pictures of people long dead and forgotten, some famous but you probably wouldn't read about anyway, and a lot of obsolete maps and whatnot. But after a while you're bound to strike oil, and struck I did in the form of Edmund Dulac. I came across a good dozen or so images of his illustrations and I was enthralled to say the least.
I don't recall ever hearing about him before but looking at his pictures they struck as very familiar. Had I known about him before I would have included him in my post about Illustration in general. The pictures remind me of some well illustrated books I remember reading as a child. Come to think of it, he very well could have graced the pages of my bedtime stories.
Edmund Dulac was born in France in 1882 and was popular during the "Golden Age of Illustration" of the early 20th century. Some illustrator greats of that era were Sir John Tenniel , Howard Pyle, Beatrix Potter and others. Akin to such artists as Wassily Kandinsky later on, he started studying law before eventually getting bored with it and turning to art. Winning prizes for art competitions early in his career certainly motivated him to pursue what he truly wanted to do. When he was 22 he was commissioned to illustrate the books of the Brontë sisters. This would start a prolific and successful career.
He went on to partner with galleries to illustrate books and sell the paintings out of the gallery. Some books from this arrangement were stories from the Arabian Nights, Sleeping Beauty, and the Poems of Edgar Allen Poe. The illustration above was from a story I remember called The Princess and the Pea by Hans Christian Anderson, where a pea was under all those mattresses and she could still feel it, proving she was indeed a true princess.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words and I think illustrations like these add value a thousand-fold to each story. At the end of this post I've added a link to the other illustration images. Some of the others include "The Mermaid," "The Garden of Paradise," and "The Emperor's New Clothes," and are definitely worth checking out.
My recent interest in illustration goes hand in hand with my personal goal of illustrating some of the classic books in the public domain. I plan on attempting a shot at illustrating "Alice's Adventure's In Wonderland," and "Aesop's Fables" among other things. I just recently picked up a pen for the first time in a while; I've mainly been using the brush for the most part recently when at all. So, we'll see how they turn out.
Although, my most likely method would be to actually paint the illustrations on canvas as many illustrators do, and scan the canvases as needed, to make prints or to resize. I'll keep you informed of my progress.
I don't recall ever hearing about him before but looking at his pictures they struck as very familiar. Had I known about him before I would have included him in my post about Illustration in general. The pictures remind me of some well illustrated books I remember reading as a child. Come to think of it, he very well could have graced the pages of my bedtime stories.
Edmund Dulac was born in France in 1882 and was popular during the "Golden Age of Illustration" of the early 20th century. Some illustrator greats of that era were Sir John Tenniel , Howard Pyle, Beatrix Potter and others. Akin to such artists as Wassily Kandinsky later on, he started studying law before eventually getting bored with it and turning to art. Winning prizes for art competitions early in his career certainly motivated him to pursue what he truly wanted to do. When he was 22 he was commissioned to illustrate the books of the Brontë sisters. This would start a prolific and successful career.
He went on to partner with galleries to illustrate books and sell the paintings out of the gallery. Some books from this arrangement were stories from the Arabian Nights, Sleeping Beauty, and the Poems of Edgar Allen Poe. The illustration above was from a story I remember called The Princess and the Pea by Hans Christian Anderson, where a pea was under all those mattresses and she could still feel it, proving she was indeed a true princess.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words and I think illustrations like these add value a thousand-fold to each story. At the end of this post I've added a link to the other illustration images. Some of the others include "The Mermaid," "The Garden of Paradise," and "The Emperor's New Clothes," and are definitely worth checking out.
My recent interest in illustration goes hand in hand with my personal goal of illustrating some of the classic books in the public domain. I plan on attempting a shot at illustrating "Alice's Adventure's In Wonderland," and "Aesop's Fables" among other things. I just recently picked up a pen for the first time in a while; I've mainly been using the brush for the most part recently when at all. So, we'll see how they turn out.
Although, my most likely method would be to actually paint the illustrations on canvas as many illustrators do, and scan the canvases as needed, to make prints or to resize. I'll keep you informed of my progress.
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