Influence of the Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau designs with their curving, organic line are not seen as frequently in American book design and illustration.  Most often Will Bradley, better known for his magazine covers, is cited as the leading practitioner of the style in the print media.  Bradley suggested that he had been influenced by the English illustrator Aubrey Beardsley as well as the Japanese design which was flooding both Europe and the United States in the late nineteenth century.  In this case, alone with Bradley and Beardsley, appears the relatively unknown work of Frank X. Leyendecker (1876-1924, brother of the more famous J. C. Leyendecker who made so many Saturday Evening Post covers.  Florence Lundborg (1870-1949), like Will Bradley, traces her design influence to  Aubrey Beardsley, producing  black and white illustrations for her version of the Rubáiyát that contrast with the colorful illustrations of Edmund Dulac (1882 – 1953).  These artists, like many others in the United States, look to the English version of the Art Nouveau, as also seen here in The Secret Rose with a cover design by Althea Gyles  (1868-1949).  

Elihu Vedder. The Digressions of V. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1910.

Illustrated by: Elihu Vedder (1836-1923)

Cover Design by: Elihu Vedder

Ernest Christopher Dowson. The Poems of Ernest Dowson with a Memoir by Arthur Symons . . . London; New York: John Lane, 1913.

Illustrations by: Aubrey Beardsley

Cover Design by: Aubrey Beardsley

Gift of: The Estate of Charles Wharton Stork

Rudyard Kipling. With the Night Mail. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1909.

Illustrated by: Frank X. Leyendecker (1876-1924), H. Reuterdahl [Henry Reuterdahl, 1871-1925]

Gift of: The John Livezey Fund

Frontispiece, by Frank X. Leyendecker

Rudyard Kipling. With the Night Mail. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1909.

Illustrated by: Frank X. Leyendecker (1876 – 1924),

H. Reuterdahl [Henry Reuterdahl, 1871 – 1925)

Gift of: The John Livezey Fund

Richard Le Gallienne. The Romance of Zion Chapel. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1898.

Cover Design by: Will Bradley (1868-1962)

Gift of: The John Livezey Fund

William Butler Yeats.  The Secret Rose.  New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.; London: Lawrence & Bullen, Ltd., 1897.

Illustrated by J. B. Yeats (father of William Butler Yeats)

Cover design by: Althea Gyles (1868-1949)

Edward Fitzgerald, trans. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1909.

Illustrated by: Edmund Dulac (1882-1953)

Cover Design by: Frank Hazenplug? (1874-1931)

Gift of: Evan Hopkins Turner

Quatrain XV

Look to the blowing Rose about us– “Lo,

Laughing,” she says, “into the world I blow:

At once the silken tassel of my Purse

Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw.”

Edward Fitzgerald, trans. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1909.

Illustrated by: Edmund Dulac (1882 – 1953)

Cover Design by: Frank Hazenplug? (1874 – 1931)

Gift of: Evan Hopkins Turner

Edward Fitzgerald, trans. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the Astronomer-Poet of Persia. New York: Doxey’s, 1900.

Illustrated by: Florence Lundborg (1870-1949)

Gift of: The John Livezey Fund