DOI Heft:
No. 142 (December, 1908)
DOI Artikel:Rutter, Frank: The drawings of Edmund Dulac
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.28256#0174
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ment wiH but further enhance the charm of his
varied imagination. Where these two quaiities are
present in a high degree, the virtues of the realistic
painter sink to secondary impottance, and an occa-
sional fault in drawing becomes a veniai trans-
gression; while, on the other hand, no correctness
of drawing, no science in perspective, can redeem
from failure an iHustration that is banal in concep-
tion and iH-batanced in design.
These vital attributes to pictorial creation—the
imaginative and the decorative—are conspicuousiy
present in the work of Mr. Edmund Duiac, the
young Franco-British artist who has so speediiy,
and deservedly, won recognition as an illustrator.
Though but two years setded in Engiand, and at
the time barely entering upon his twenty-sixth
year, Mr. Dulac a year ago suddeniy swam into our
ken and simultaneousiy "arrived," as we say, on
the occasion of the exhibition at the Leicester
Gaiieries of his water-coiours iiiustrating " The
Arabian Nights." In this series was dispiayed a
decided decorative taient wedded to an invention
at once fertiie and happy in its appropriateness—
an invention pouring forth in profusion a weaith
of fancies, now iivened by a humorous insistence
on the grotesque, now sobered by an awakening to
the expectancy of romance. Inspired by the
adventurous atmosphere of his text, quickened by
the spirit of Orientai witchery, Mr. Duiac spread
for us in these iast the magic carpet, and set us in
the presence of veiied princesses perilously seated
in enchanted pataces.
Adequately to iltustrate this famous classic of
the East must necessariiy tax to a severe extent
the versatife ingenuity of an artist, for if he woutd
keep pace with the entertainment of the original he
must have within himseif more than a little of its
inexhaustibie fecundity. Of this difhcult task Mr.
Duiac acquits himself with distinction, alluring us
by the daintiness of his feminine types, diverting
us by his racy characterisation of the older males,
sounding in tragi-comic vein the alarms of Sindbad
and Ali Baba, or ringing out the joys of Aladdin
and Camaraizaman. Satisfactorily to depict the
varied emotions of this familiar company requires
a wide range in the rendering of facial expression,
and in his summary notation of the sentiments
respectively dominating each separate character,
Mr. Dulac reveals his knowledge of physiognomy
as well as the vividness of his imagination. As an
"TH3 DANCING LESSON" &y./ BV EDMUND DULAC
104
ment wiH but further enhance the charm of his
varied imagination. Where these two quaiities are
present in a high degree, the virtues of the realistic
painter sink to secondary impottance, and an occa-
sional fault in drawing becomes a veniai trans-
gression; while, on the other hand, no correctness
of drawing, no science in perspective, can redeem
from failure an iHustration that is banal in concep-
tion and iH-batanced in design.
These vital attributes to pictorial creation—the
imaginative and the decorative—are conspicuousiy
present in the work of Mr. Edmund Duiac, the
young Franco-British artist who has so speediiy,
and deservedly, won recognition as an illustrator.
Though but two years setded in Engiand, and at
the time barely entering upon his twenty-sixth
year, Mr. Dulac a year ago suddeniy swam into our
ken and simultaneousiy "arrived," as we say, on
the occasion of the exhibition at the Leicester
Gaiieries of his water-coiours iiiustrating " The
Arabian Nights." In this series was dispiayed a
decided decorative taient wedded to an invention
at once fertiie and happy in its appropriateness—
an invention pouring forth in profusion a weaith
of fancies, now iivened by a humorous insistence
on the grotesque, now sobered by an awakening to
the expectancy of romance. Inspired by the
adventurous atmosphere of his text, quickened by
the spirit of Orientai witchery, Mr. Duiac spread
for us in these iast the magic carpet, and set us in
the presence of veiied princesses perilously seated
in enchanted pataces.
Adequately to iltustrate this famous classic of
the East must necessariiy tax to a severe extent
the versatife ingenuity of an artist, for if he woutd
keep pace with the entertainment of the original he
must have within himseif more than a little of its
inexhaustibie fecundity. Of this difhcult task Mr.
Duiac acquits himself with distinction, alluring us
by the daintiness of his feminine types, diverting
us by his racy characterisation of the older males,
sounding in tragi-comic vein the alarms of Sindbad
and Ali Baba, or ringing out the joys of Aladdin
and Camaraizaman. Satisfactorily to depict the
varied emotions of this familiar company requires
a wide range in the rendering of facial expression,
and in his summary notation of the sentiments
respectively dominating each separate character,
Mr. Dulac reveals his knowledge of physiognomy
as well as the vividness of his imagination. As an
"TH3 DANCING LESSON" &y./ BV EDMUND DULAC
104