Comments on: She made pictures of haunting loveliness.

She made pictures of haunting loveliness.

nev — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 20:05:40 -0800

19 year-old Virginia Frances Sterrett was commissioned by the Penn Publishing Company to illustrate Old French Fairy Tales by Comtesse de Segur (1920). Sterrett was already ill with tuberculosis, the disease that would end her life at age 30.

In her brief career she completed two more illustrated books, both for Penn: Tanglewood Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Arabian Nights. She did much of her work while in a sanatorium and could only draw for brief periods. A fourth book, an edition of Myths and Legends, was never finished; her TB came out of remission and she died in the summer of 1931. The incomplete drawings have never been published. Though she was largely self-taught, Sterrett's arresting visual style evokes other Art Nouveau illustrators, including Kay Nielsen and Edmund Dulac.

By: pla

pla — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 20:27:04 -0800

Hey now, no need to pine for the past, we've already started dying off from polydrug-resistant TB again. For once, those wild and crazy Victorians won't get all the fun!

By: hippybear

hippybear — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 20:28:59 -0800

Wow. How outstandingly gorgeous. I love this style of art a lot. Thanks so much for posting!

By: Lexica

Lexica — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 20:31:22 -0800

Oh, this is quite lovely and delightf— ZOMG FOREST OF LILACS!!! Oh, yay! *suddenly reevaluates plans for what was going to get accomplished this evening*

By: Hardcore Poser

Hardcore Poser — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 20:35:41 -0800

The way she draws plants is wonderful - undulating in seemingly random directions, yet not quite sprawling. Beautiful.

By: hippybear

hippybear — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 20:38:54 -0800

Definite hints of Erté in the way she does her human figures, too. (Although everything else is Nouveau instead of Deco.)

By: benito.strauss

benito.strauss — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 20:45:05 -0800

Love it. And although it's not really out of the same school, I'll bet that if you like these you'll like the illustrations by Andrej and Olga Dugin for the story Dragon Feathers.

By: brennen

brennen — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 20:50:06 -0800

Thanks for this. I think I have a bunch of digging around on openlibrary.org to do now.

By: shelleycat

shelleycat — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 20:56:48 -0800

This is lovely.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 21:17:15 -0800

OH GOD A DIRECT PORT TO MY AESTHETIC SENSIBILITIES WHY THANK YOU

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 21:19:18 -0800

Definite hints of Erté in the way she does her human figures, too. (Although everything else is Nouveau instead of Deco.) Very Erte in a few compositions, and looks a lot like the stuff Yoshitaka Amano is drawing from.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 21:21:49 -0800

But yeah it's like Dulac Does Deco. A colored, more fanciful kind of Harry Clarke

By: stagewhisper

stagewhisper — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 21:22:54 -0800

gorgeous.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 21:26:46 -0800

The mishmash of cultures for the Arabian Nights is interesting. It's a confusion of Middle Eastern and Far East motifs, anything "East" got thrown in, from minaret spires to Indian patterns and Chinese headdresses and Turkish miniature.

By: killdevil

killdevil — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 21:51:07 -0800

Wow, this is a great post.

By: nickyskye

nickyskye — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 00:41:39 -0800

Wow, what a visual feast! So beautiful! Thank you so much nev! Treasure, a great find.

By: ukdanae

ukdanae — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 04:45:02 -0800

This is so wonderful! When I was a kid I read so many fairy tales, and these gorgeous illustrations take me back to that magical feeling where the world is this beautiful. Thank you!

By: SomeTrickPony

SomeTrickPony — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 05:12:39 -0800

OH GOD A DIRECT PORT TO MY AESTHETIC SENSIBILITIES WHY THANK YOU WITH A PAYPAL BUTTON. CURSE YOU!

By: hippybear

hippybear — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 07:18:00 -0800

Well, in fairness, the page with the PayPal button does have three pretty high-quality .pdfs on it for free download...

By: Iridic

Iridic — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 07:37:06 -0800

It's a confusion of Middle Eastern and Far East motifs, anything "East" got thrown in, from minaret spires to Indian patterns and Chinese headdresses and Turkish miniature. There's actually some justification for that. Aladdin's tale is explicitly set in an Islamic version of China, Prince Ahmed and his brothers ramble all over the Indian subcontinent, and Sinbad's adventures are strung along the seven seas between Arabia and China. Sterrett's art may well be a purposeful comment on the syncretism and exoticism inherent in the story.

By: SLC Mom

SLC Mom — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 07:38:57 -0800

How beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 07:46:13 -0800

Ah! My glib surface knowledge of things attacks again.

By: Ron Thanagar

Ron Thanagar — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 08:04:21 -0800

WOWIE! An illustrator I knew nothing about! As a long-time admirer of Kay Nielson's work, all I can say is: Love it! THANKS!

By: silentsender

silentsender — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 12:51:16 -0800

It's an absolutely horrible disease and many people don't know that it is still around. I actually know someone who died from it- the long painful failire of the respitory system.

By: biscotti

biscotti — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 17:41:19 -0800

What an awesome post, these are beautiful.

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 18:50:26 -0800

lovely, thanks for posting it.

By: audacity

audacity — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 09:48:23 -0800

I love this! From a digitization perspective, it drives me a bit crazy that all the color images in Old French Fairy Tales are swapped with their captions so the pages are in the wrong order... am I the only one weird enough to notice this?