The American Weekly Covers of Edmund Dulac 1924-1951: The 100th Anniversary Edition
Magnificent spread of cover art from an absolute master illustrator, reproduced in very high quality images – a great resource for admirers of Edmund Dulac and his highly distinctive art work. — Amazon Review
To slightly warp what Indiana Jones once said about priceless artifacts, the gorgeous watercolor paintings created by Edmund Dulac for The American Weekly magazine belong in a museum. But the original paintings have vanished into private collections, with no treasure map left behind to give clues to their locations. But when Albert Seligman, fueled by his passion for Dulac’s work, went searching for any trace of the cover art, he was rewarded with an ‘Indy moment’. He discovered that the Academy of Comic Art in San Francisco had a complete collection of The American Weekly magazines. His dream of making Dulac’s cover illustrations accessible to everyone was finally within reach. But it was the 1990s, and the technology needed to capture high-quality images digitally was still rudimentary, and not easily accessible by just anyone. So instead, Seligman convinced the museum to let him take all the magazines with covers by Edmund Dulac away to be professionally photographed. — “A License to Quill” Book Review
Much has been written about Edmund Dulac’s mastery of art deco and design since his death in May of 1953. He was born in Toulouse, France in 1882 and was educated as a lawyer, although he rebelled and later studied art at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He is best known as one of the giants of the ‘Golden Age of Illustration’ along with Arthur Rackham and Kay Nielsen. His beautiful watercolor book illustrations are still in print today, and the original first editions are scarce and highly valued.
Dulac emigrated to England from France in 1904 and he was in London at exactly the right time for the invention of color separation photographic reproduction. Prior to the color separation process printers relied on wood blocks or expensive and complicated chromo-lithography to include color illustrations in their books. Most illustrators (Arthur Rackham and W. Heath Robinson, for example) used line drawings to hold the difference in the color changes. Dulac was a watercolorist and this new technique allowed him to paint the colors just as he would normally, without bold lines defining his subjects. He received numerous commissions for the new ‘gift books’ with full color tipped-in plates mounted on heavy art paper. He began an arrangement with both Leicester Galleries and Hodder & Stoughton, the book publishers, to paint watercolors for their illustrated gift book editions which would be sold in the gallery exhibit once a year. He produced fifty oriental style drawings for The Arabian Nights in 1907, forty drawings for an edition of The Tempest in 1908, twenty watercolors, again in his now signature orientalism style, for The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in 1909. Subsequent editions were The Sleeping Beauty and Other Fairy Tales in 1910, Stories from Hans Christian Andersen in 1911, and twenty-eight watercolors with dozens of line illustrations for The Bells and Other Poems byEdgar Allan Poe in 1912.
In 1923, “Edmund Dulac, the Distinguished English Artist,”as he was billed on the front covers, was contracted by the Hearst organization to paint watercolors for The American Weekly magazine, the Sunday supplement for the newspapers. The contract lasted nearly 30 years. Dulac painted 106 watercolors from 1924-1951 for thirteen different series for The American Weekly. Although these watercolors were highly praised at the time, their reproduction was only sporadic, with some appearing in The Illustrated London News over the years, and once in a 1936 picture book titled Gods and Mortals in Love.
The American Weekly illustrations in this book were photographed from the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art, which was owned and operated by Bill Blackbeard. After Bill’s passing in 2011, the entire collection was moved to The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University.
This 100th anniversary edition contains all the series with some of his other illustrations. They have been restored as well as possible, as many of the front covers had deteriorated over the years. I have also published these illustrations in more detail in a series of six books, with the original captions. They are available as eBooks and will also be released as print editions.
The American Weekly Covers 1924-1951
1924- Bible Scenes and Heroes
1925- Characters From the Arabian Nights
1929- Famous Vamps of History
1931- Love Stories the Ancients Believed In
1932- Enchanting Fairyland Lovers
1933- Myths the Ancients Believed
1934- Follies that Destroyed Famous Queens
1936- Song of Solomon
1937- Beauty and the Beast
1938- Fighting Women
1940- Seven Tales From King Arthur’s Court
1942- 8 Canterbury Tales
1950,51- Tales from The Arabian Nights
What readers are saying about The American Weekly Covers of Edmund Dulac 1924-1951:
Magnificent spread of cover art from an absolute master illustrator, reproduced in very high quality images – a great resource for admirers of Edmund Dulac and his highly distinctive art work. — Amazon Review
To slightly warp what Indiana Jones once said about priceless artifacts, the gorgeous watercolor paintings created by Edmund Dulac for The American Weekly magazine belong in a museum. But the original paintings have vanished into private collections, with no treasure map left behind to give clues to their locations. But when Albert Seligman, fueled by his passion for Dulac’s work, went searching for any trace of the cover art, he was rewarded with an ‘Indy moment’. He discovered that the Academy of Comic Art in San Francisco had a complete collection of The American Weekly magazines. His dream of making Dulac’s cover illustrations accessible to everyone was finally within reach. But it was the 1990s, and the technology needed to capture high-quality images digitally was still rudimentary, and not easily accessible by just anyone. So instead, Seligman convinced the museum to let him take all the magazines with covers by Edmund Dulac away to be professionally photographed. — “A License to Quill” Book Review