Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Dugald Stewart Walker





Recently I've taken an interest in old book illustrations in order to get a better taste of the history of this field and to inspire classical strategies in my decisions while creating. There is a blog that I follow called "Old Book Illustrations" which posts work by Illustrators, dates ranging from the 1800s to the early 1900s. The work covers all kinds of genres, including technical illustrations of machines or objects, while other illustrations are more concerned with conveying a story or idea, in either an abstract or realistic manner.
While surfing this blog, I took a liking to an storybook illustrator named Dugald Stewart Walker because of his inclination to create fairytale-like dreamscapes. Dugald is considered to be part of the Golden Age of Illustration, and I often see elements in his work that are attributed to the Art Nouveau period. The highly decorative compositions in the images posted above is a clear indicator of Art Nouveau. There is very little information out there about Dugald and no association with the Art Nouveau movement is mentioned. However, it makes sense to me that an artist who lived through the movement and then moved on to create illustrations in the 1920s would have strong influences of Art Nouveau appear in his work.

The two images above are from a book named "Dream Boats and Other Stories", written and illustrated by Dugald. The book is a collection of short stories/poems, written in a playful and dreamy language, which I believe is beautifully supplemented by the flowing and floral ladies he illustrates.

Also, just for fun, here is an example of some of the language Dugald uses in "Dream Boats":


Send the tinkle ringing around, and around,
all ye little flowers that bear as your bloom a
bell, unto the time of its echoing through the
daffy-down-dilly and thus awaken the dreaming
dragon fly.

O pollen-powdered clappers, strike your flower
bells, sending forth a resonance of sounds on
every wave of sweet odour that arises from your
silken throats!



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