Another Dulac I’d not seen before, and what an exceptional edition it is. Tanglewood Tales is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s retelling of Greek myths, a popular book for children that’s been through many reprints. Dulac’s edition dates from 1918, with the illustrations combining some of the stylisation of Greek art with Dulac’s own derivations from Persian miniatures. This might seem odd historically—the Greeks and Persians were enemies, after all—but every plate is a beautiful piece of work. Collectors of Pan imagery should note a fine example in the twelfth painting.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
Appears to also have been influenced by the German/Austrian Secession in some of the architectural detailing.
That’s possible although the subject is Greek, and the Secessionists looked to Ancient Greece as an ideal. An early sketch for the Secession building in Vienna had it looking more like a Greek temple than it does in its final form.