I would have posted this by now if it hadn’t been for the recent unpleasantness. Robert Stewart Sherriffs (1906-60) was a Scottish artist who I confess I hadn’t come across before until Nick H (thanks, Nick!) drew my attention to this book at silver-gryph’s eBay pages. Sherriffs’ illustrated edtion of The Life and Death of Tamburlaine the Great by Christopher Marlowe was published in a limited edition in 1930.
The drawings are black-and-white throughout, and of such a quality you have to wonder why Dover or someone hasn’t done a reprint. The general approach owes much to the usual suspects, notably Aubrey Beardsley and Harry Clarke, but there’s a development of these earlier styles that you also find in the work of Ray Frederick Coyle and Beresford Egan. In addition to the full-page plates Sherriffs also provided a number of insect vignettes, the last of which is a Death’s-head Hawkmoth.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
More akin to the work of the American illustrator Wallace Smith, I think.
Yes, I was reminded of Smith too. I wrote about Fantazius Mallare a while back:
http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2007/01/31/fantazius-mallare-and-the-kingdom-of-evil/
Someone needs to send those to Michael Moorcock as illustrations for a novel he hasn’t written yet.