leigh illustrated edward bawden (1 résultats)

Soft cover. Etat : Very Good. 1st Edition. East Coasting, Dell Leigh, illustrated by Edward Bawden. pub.London and North Eastern Railway, printed at the Curwen Press. n.d. (1931) first ed. 63 pages. Orange wrappers fade to the spine area, faint ring mark and a small splash mark to the rear cover. Staple bound, staples rusted. Coloured title page, coloured headpieces, b/w tailpieces by Bawden. Throughout, Art history is lightly filtered through Bawden's English comic sensibility, and gentle jokes and references abound. For example, Bawden's headpiece for the chapter 'The Fiercest Fight of All', about the Battle of Otterburn, clearly pays homage to Uccello's 'The Battle of San Romano' in the disposition of the lances and the foreshortened perspective. The enormous bather emerging from the waves in the 'Gaiety and Ghosts' chapter recalls Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus' and his early flirtation with Surrealism shows through in small details such as the old lady on the title page snatched from her bathchair by an enormous lobster. The man in the process of being kidnapped by a mermaid brings to mind any number of Victorian takes on the temptations of the Sirens. The commercial commissions he took on as an artist reflected his deep knowledge of art history. Bawden took his work very seriously, but never himself.