I couldn’t very well mention Alastair (as I did yesterday) without looking at some of his spectacular illustrations. An initial – acknowledged – debt to Beardsley is apparent, but Alastair soon developed his own vision that invested his literary illustrations with a heady opiate allure; the more I look at these images the deeper I fall into them. His gifts found their ideal vehicle in the sublime Rococo surfaces and treacherous undercurrents of Choderlos de Laclos’s epistolary novel Les Liaisons dangereuses, which Alastair illustrated for the Crosbys’ Black Sun publishing house in 1929. If nothing else, Alastair could have been an incredible fashion designer.
Further reading
Dress-down Friday: Alastair
A Casati family tree
A German miscellany
Catching up
Alastair on film
Been loving the Alastair posts, and will probably nab this one!
(Also, do not think that your fabulous and ever-evolving headers go unnoticed!)
Wonderful! I wish the reproductions were better – it’s all about the details.
Glad you like the headers!
these images are certainly most amazing! I wonder if the originals have survived and where would they be at present?
I believe many original Alastair illustrations are held by the Moritzburg museum in Halle, who staged an exhibition in 2004 and produced the best book on Alastair to date, the catalogue Alastair: Kunst als Schicksal. I don’t know if they own the copyright in the images (many are simply marked as “private collection”) but the Dover anthology which came out last year was a travesty: terrible reproductions, and only a few pages of text which was riddled with errors.
7th one down: That desk. That desk. I need that desk.
But I’d settle for any piece of furniture with hooves.
Thrilling, no?
Original Alastair drawings do come up for sale occasionally – a drawing of Loie Fuller sold for £750 at Bloomsbury Auctions a few years ago. The Dangerous Liaisons books are my favourite – and they came in silver-foil slipcases to add an extra decadent touch. The illustrations for Poe’s House of usher were also tipped onto silver foil (and also published by the doomed Crosbys).
750! What an incredible bargain. I hope it went to a good home…
I hope so too, but sadly it wasn’t my home as I forgot to bid. I have been cursing myself ever since.
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Your art is simply wonderful!