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Alice Illustration Source
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From: Aptimber at aol.com <Aptimber>
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 19:22:47 EDT
Hi everyone - Before we leave the illustration topic, I wanted to mention a source I found at Virginia Commonwealth University's library:
Graham Oveden, ed., THE ILLUSTRATORS OF ALICE IN WONDERLAND AND THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1972).
Most of the text in this book is contained in an introduction by John Davis. After the introduction, the book is a series of illustrations by different illustrators divided by chapters. It's fun. There's a lot of early work. Some of the illustrators included are: Lewis Carroll, Willy Pogany (1929), A. L. Bowley (1921), Charles Robinson (1907), Gwynedd Hudson (1922), Philip Gough (1940), Mabel Lucie Atwell (1910), Marvyn Peake (1954), Tenniel, A.E. Jackson (1915), Harry Furniss (1926), Margaret Tarrant (1916), Robert Hogfeldt (1945), Millicent Sowerby (1907), and others.
Anyway, it's the kind of book that makes you starving for more. It's certainly made me want to find these books and see them whole.
One of my favorite illustrations is in the section on Chapter 2, "The Pool of Tears." There's an illustration of Alice sitting in a puddle of her tears, the water up to her knees, by Charles Robinson (1907). Alice looks like a girl of eight -- it's almost like a photograph. She looks directly off the page at the reader, and she's crying, but she's angry at her own crying. Her hair is damp and flat. Robinson's style looks very Art Nouveau. The illustration has this great stylized border of two mice and two tassels.
(The mice hang by their tails just like tassels.) Alice's reflection is in the pool of water, and the water swirls around in a very stylized way -- yet Alice looks extremely real. It's stunning. Now some of the other Robinson illustrations in this book, I'm not as crazy about, because the style gets in the way of the communication of the illustration. It's like you can't get at the emotion (and even the subject) because Robinson falls in love with his own curved lines.
There's some other interesting illustrators too: There's a Max Ernst illustration -- a sort of strange group of primitive symbols that look like they were stamped on with potato stamps. Graham Ovendon (the editor and also an illustrator) does some moody, foggy Alice illustration -- it's like Ingmar Bergman meets Alice -- every illustration seems to be a study of Alice's face with slightly different emotional angles. (I don't know if anyone has seen the close-ups in Ingmar Bergman's "Cries and Whispers," but that's what Ovenden reminded me of.) There's also another illustrator I loved: Mervyn Peake (1954) -- his style is more pen and ink, lots of dotting and texture, and his characters have the greatest noses I've ever seen!
Anyway, I hope some of you will want to find this book -- it's lots of fun. Also, I am reading the recommended annotated Alice by Martin Gardner and I love it. The notes are so interesting that I get completely sidetracked. In the THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS section, Gardner's notes on the chess game has caused my husband and I to think about getting out the chess board and tracking the pieces across the board just to see what happens. (With Gardner's notes this is possible. He tells you exactly where all the characters are on the chess board.)
That's it!
Amy Timberlake
Received on Wed 25 Oct 2000 06:22:47 PM CDT
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 19:22:47 EDT
Hi everyone - Before we leave the illustration topic, I wanted to mention a source I found at Virginia Commonwealth University's library:
Graham Oveden, ed., THE ILLUSTRATORS OF ALICE IN WONDERLAND AND THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1972).
Most of the text in this book is contained in an introduction by John Davis. After the introduction, the book is a series of illustrations by different illustrators divided by chapters. It's fun. There's a lot of early work. Some of the illustrators included are: Lewis Carroll, Willy Pogany (1929), A. L. Bowley (1921), Charles Robinson (1907), Gwynedd Hudson (1922), Philip Gough (1940), Mabel Lucie Atwell (1910), Marvyn Peake (1954), Tenniel, A.E. Jackson (1915), Harry Furniss (1926), Margaret Tarrant (1916), Robert Hogfeldt (1945), Millicent Sowerby (1907), and others.
Anyway, it's the kind of book that makes you starving for more. It's certainly made me want to find these books and see them whole.
One of my favorite illustrations is in the section on Chapter 2, "The Pool of Tears." There's an illustration of Alice sitting in a puddle of her tears, the water up to her knees, by Charles Robinson (1907). Alice looks like a girl of eight -- it's almost like a photograph. She looks directly off the page at the reader, and she's crying, but she's angry at her own crying. Her hair is damp and flat. Robinson's style looks very Art Nouveau. The illustration has this great stylized border of two mice and two tassels.
(The mice hang by their tails just like tassels.) Alice's reflection is in the pool of water, and the water swirls around in a very stylized way -- yet Alice looks extremely real. It's stunning. Now some of the other Robinson illustrations in this book, I'm not as crazy about, because the style gets in the way of the communication of the illustration. It's like you can't get at the emotion (and even the subject) because Robinson falls in love with his own curved lines.
There's some other interesting illustrators too: There's a Max Ernst illustration -- a sort of strange group of primitive symbols that look like they were stamped on with potato stamps. Graham Ovendon (the editor and also an illustrator) does some moody, foggy Alice illustration -- it's like Ingmar Bergman meets Alice -- every illustration seems to be a study of Alice's face with slightly different emotional angles. (I don't know if anyone has seen the close-ups in Ingmar Bergman's "Cries and Whispers," but that's what Ovenden reminded me of.) There's also another illustrator I loved: Mervyn Peake (1954) -- his style is more pen and ink, lots of dotting and texture, and his characters have the greatest noses I've ever seen!
Anyway, I hope some of you will want to find this book -- it's lots of fun. Also, I am reading the recommended annotated Alice by Martin Gardner and I love it. The notes are so interesting that I get completely sidetracked. In the THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS section, Gardner's notes on the chess game has caused my husband and I to think about getting out the chess board and tracking the pieces across the board just to see what happens. (With Gardner's notes this is possible. He tells you exactly where all the characters are on the chess board.)
That's it!
Amy Timberlake
Received on Wed 25 Oct 2000 06:22:47 PM CDT
