"This day's experience, set in order, none of it left ragged or lying about, all of it gathered in like treasure and finished with, set aside." –Alice Munro, "What is Remembered"
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ABOVE: Ferdynand Ruszczyc, Nec Mergitur (1905). Via The Pictorial Arts.
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TANGENTIAL BONUS IMAGE:
ABOVE: Claude Monet, Morning at Etretat (1883), oil on canvas, 81 x 63 cm. Via TRANSISTORADIO.
Seems like I’m constantly flipping through dusty, inexpensive old books searching for hidden gems of illustration, and more often than not, coming up empty. Yesterday, however, I finally, after a bit of a drought, came across a book with pictures that I thought would make a lovely addition to the archive here at RCN.
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The interior images are a little soft, but that’s due more to certain technical shortcomings of the reproduction than to my obdurate incompetence as a scanner.
What I didn’t realize when I purchased The Little Lame Prince and Other Stories (Philadelphia: David McKay Company, 1927) by Dinah Maria Mulock, is that the illustrator, Gertrude A. Kay, was a student of Howard Pyle at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia! You can read a short profile of Gertrude A. Kay, who was successful both as a illustrator for women’s magazines and as a writer and illustrator of children’s books, over at a site called Illustration Art Solutions.
For my money, Howard Pyle’s illustrations for his 1903 book, The Story of King Arthur and His Knights, were among the finest pen-and-ink illustrations of his career, which, of course, makes them some of the finest pen-and-ink illustrations of all time.
I scanned the following images from a library discard book that I bought a week or two ago at the local thrift store; the stain on the first image is from the glue that holds the circulation-card pocket in place on the other side of the page. Fortunately, the rest of the images were undamaged, though it was, at times, difficult to press the book down sufficiently to avoid focus problems near the gutters.
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P.S. I’ve long thought that Pyle’s portraits of King Arthur, Uther Pendragon, etc., were the inspiration for the portraits of King Arthur, Queen Ginevere, Sir Launcelot, Merlyn Ambrose, Elaine of Shalott, and Sir Galahad, contained in the minature Gorblimey Press portfolio, Excalibur: Six Drawings by Barry Windsor-Smith.
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Piracy, indeed…
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See also: Connections: Pyle, Wyeth, Frazetta
As I was a-wanderin’ the Web for pleasure, I spied an illustration I thought looked familiar…
If it’s an homage, then Smith should be delighted someone recognized the reference, right?
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Frazetta’s obvious borrowing from Pyle has been pointed out many times in the past; however, I’ve never seen anyone add Wyeth’s painting to the mix (although surely someone has, the line of influence being so clear). Now, of the three galleon paintings, it seems obvious to me that Pyle’s original effort is not only the first but also the best of the three. It’s the best composed; it’s the most expressively painted; it’s the most dramatic. No wonder Wyeth and Frazetta (who seems to me to have borrowed as much from Wyeth’s galleon as from Pyle’s) were enthralled by Pyle’s Attack on a Galleon. It’s a masterpiece. And which of the remaining two galleon paintings is the weakest, Wyeth’s picturesque, chocolate-box cliché or Frazetta’s virtuosic but underdeveloped pastiche? You decide…
BONUS IMAGE (added 23 December 2013):
Ragged Claws Network 