W. H. Robinson, with even more Kipling

Last October, I put up a post about some beautiful color work by W. Heath Robinson (1872-1944). The imagery up at that time was from The Song of the English, a long poetic piece of writing by Rudyard Kipling. It was one of the first books I acquired while working on my next Dover outing, Golden Age Illustration of W. H. Robinson. Now I bring it around full circle, to the last book I picked up for that same project.

While lacking the amount of pieces that show up in Song of the English, this volume of Kipling Poetry— Collected Verse— has some masterful imagery as well. I almost passed up acquiring it, it has comparatively few color plates— but I stumbled upon a a 1910 Doubleday copy, with all the art, and a nearly detached cover...that I got very reasonably. So let me share a few of these with you, as a preview of the upcoming book. As for the illustrative years of W. H. Robinson's career, (who later went on to become a very successful cartoonist, leaving more traditional book illustration to others) the works he did for these two Kipling volumes in 1909 and 1910 are among his best. Other books that will be featured in the upcoming Dover work include images from The Water Babies, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and some of W. H. Robinson's own writings— Uncle Lubin and Bill the Minder.

Next month at some point, I'll bring out some of the best work from his older brother, Charles.

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Return from the Edge

I've been to the Edge—and it was terrific. If you have ANY CHANCE AT ALL to get to the show mentioned in my last post, don't let it get past you. Three big gallery rooms, packed with a wealth of the best fantastic creatives out there. Thank you, Pat and Jeannie, and thank you Allentown Art Museum.

W.H. Robinson's Color Bulls-Eye

What do I mean by that... you ask? I mean, he hit dead center on this one with his color work.

A few months ago while profiling the Calla Fall 11 releases (there's still one Golden Age reprint left to discuss) I posted a selection of William Heath Robinson's (British, 1872-1944) line work from Midsummer Night's Dream. WHR's line in that volume is beautifully clean and balanced, while the characters are intricate and full of personality. It's gorgeous ink work—but I chose not to review the color plates in that volume. I can't say the color work (in MSND) has the same impact on me as the ink work; the color is fine, but the ink work is excellent.

In other internet wanderings, I come across plates for a volume that W. H. Robinson produced in 1909. A Song of the English, by Rudyard Kipling. In this volume, the line work, while plentiful, is rather ordinary, but the color work here absolutely sings. I did some homework, and found that only the earliest copies contained all 30 of the color images... and they fetch quite a price. but good things come to those who wait, and after some time, I came across a nice copy which I can share with you today. Each of these five images is shown with the surrounding piece of line-work frame, printed in a soft color on the text stock, which frames the tipped-in full-color illustration. All of the plates for the volume are visible here, if you have a yearning to see the whole set.

or the whole volume, poem, line work, and all, here

The poem is about the grand Empire of Britain, which was quite extraordinary when Kipling wrote it in 1896. (The poem was originally published as part of the The Seven Seas) The dated qualities of the poem, and the attitudes that may not be universally favorable, may detract a bit from the books value in today's market, but the illustrations are some of W. H. Robinson's best. Subtlety, symbolism, solid figures, beautiful color.
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In more current times, if any of you folks are heading off to Illuxcon, in Altoona, PA in a few weeks, (for the Illustration conference that happens there annually) keep an eye out for me—I'll have some of my books along with my own work at the Showcase event on Friday night.

Happy 201, Mr. Poe

It has come to my attention that Poe's 201st birthday was this past week (Jan. 19th). I'm a big fan of Poe imagery. In 2007 I put together a book collecting illustrations of his works— it gave me a new avenue to explore in regards to illustration collections, grouping by theme rather than artist. I enjoy this approach, with four titles so far, and a fifth on the way soon. But Poe will always be my first...

There are some stand-out samples in the Poe Illustrated collection. Dulac's pieces are amazing, I showed one just a few weeks ago, and I'll put up a Poe portrait here that appears to be a Dulac etching . There is some nice color work by Byam Shaw, a British Illustrator who went on to found an Art School, and Harry Clarke's nearly definitive work on Poe. Then there are some really inspired ink pieces by a young William Heath Robinson (1872-1944). Robinson was one of three successful illustrator brothers who all did book illustration. Most of William Heath's latter work relied heavily on satire, humor, and some crazy imaginative inventions. I called these images inspired because they are not his usual material or even style, he hadn't really settled on that yet at this point in his career. These pieces are highly influenced by the Art Nouveau movement that would have been going strong at the time (1900), and are more decorative than most of W. H. Robinson's latter works. He pulls off the mix of his own storytelling with the style of the day fantastically. The small book these pieces came from contains scores of beautiful line pieces, Including some incredible full page plates. Here's a couple of my faves, and a link to the whole thing on pdf.

http://www.archive.org/details/poemsillustrated00poeerich

There's a lot more to tell about the brothers Robinson. I'll try to get back to W. H., Charles, and Thomas Heath, in the near future.