Happy Halloween! Dulac's Poe

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 6 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about golden age illustration.


The Raven
In the golden age of book illustration, there were two artists who led the field... Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac. Both of these artists were prolific, but of the two, Dulac was the most stylistically versatile. Today, we digitized one of Dulac's most unique books, The Poetical Works of Edgar Allen Poe (1912).

Dulac took full advantage of the printing technology of his day to create images full of deep shadow, inviting the viewer to peer into the details in the darkness. Note for instance the figure in The Raven. His body falls into the shadow across the chair and rug, defined only by the cool shadowy colors of his trousers against the warm ones of the background. Dulac's images perfectly capture Poe's dark, melancholy moods, as well as the cosmic, dreamlike situations of poems like Israfel. Light is used to great effect with eerie, otherworldly uplighting in To One In Paradise, cool moonlight through an open window in The Sleeper, and a pinpoint light source in To Helen.

One of the genres of storytelling that has been rarely employed in animation is gothic horror. Looking at these images, it's clear that animation would be capable of creating a dark, sinister world even more vivid than could be ever be created in live action.




The Bells


The Bells


To One In Paradise


Lenore


To Helen


The Haunted Palace


The Sleeper


Eldorado


The Conqueror Worm


To The River


To Helen


To - -


Israfel


Dreamland

We will have more artwork by Edmund Dulac in the coming weeks. I'd like to introduce our newest Archive Alliance... nocloo.com, the home of the Children's Book Illustrators Archive. In the coming weeks and months, nocloo.com will be sharing scans from their collection of vintage illustrated books. Check out their website and their galleries of images for a wealth of information on classic illustrators.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

10.28.08
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