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| Antique print - Exquisite Illustration - “there flashed upward a glow and a glare” 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.In the tale of “The Gold-Bug“, a scarab beetle is used to divine the site of buried gold: “…the beetle… glistened, like a globe of burnished gold, in the last rays of the setting sun”
“In an instant, a treasure of incalculable value lay gleaming before us. As the rays of the lanterns fell within the pit, there flashed upward a glow and a glare, from a confused heap of gold and of jewels, that absolutely dazzled our eyes.” A stunning illustration from “The Gold-Bug” exquisite detail to the forest and crags surrounding the treasure.
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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