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| Antique print - Exquisite Illustration - “It was the most noisome quarter of London” 1933A stunning image of one of Harry Clarke's superb illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe's macabre "Tales of Mystery and Imagination". The collection includes some of the most well-known and loved mystery tales of all time, including "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Premature Burial", "The Masque of the Red Death", "The Fall of the House of Usher", "Ligeia", "A Descent into the Maelstrom", "The Raven" among others. In the tradition of the House of Hammer films of the 1960s and 1970s, Roger Corman immortalised many of Poe's tales of madness and premature burial in film in the early sixties, featuring such actors as the magnificent Vincent Price, Ray Milland, Basil Rathbone and Peter Lorre.
Irish illustrator, Harry Clarke's (1889-1931) work was heavily influenced by the Art Nouveau movement, and together with Rackham, Neilsen and Dulac, he was one of the finest illustrators of his time. As with Aubrey Beardsley, with whom he is often compared, some of Clarke's finest work was in black and white. A vivid and often macabre imagination informs his work, and his illustrations from Poe are superb.“It was the most noisome quarter of London, where every thing wore the worst impress of the most deplorable poverty, and of the most desperate crime. By the dim light of an accidental lamp, tall, antique, worm-eaten, wooden tenements were seen tottering to their fall, in directions so many and capricious, that scarce the semblance of a passage was discernible between them. The paving-stones lay at random, displaced from their beds by the rankly-growing grass. Horrible filth festered in the dammed-up gutters. The whole atmosphere teemed with desolation..” A remarkable illustration from “The Man of the Crowd” fantastic detail and colouring, the stranger in his black cape is stunning, with impossibly long pointed fingers, a small dagger tucked into his belt and a beautiful black cane – mesmerizing in its detail…
Clarke's fantastical, macabre, and often disturbing illustrations for Poe's work, never shy away from the morbid side of the tales, and if any images of death, decay, madness and obsession, can be said to be exquisite, then these are they - some of the best to be found and they made his reputation as a book illustrator during the golden age of gift-book illustration in the early twentieth century.
Clarke's work has been compared to that of Aubrey Beardsley, Kay Nielsen, and Edmund Dulac but his images are unique and darkly powerful, suiting the tone of the tales perfectly.Mounted on a stunning jet black mount with a slight sheen. |
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