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A FINE ORIGINAL WATERCOLOUR DULAC, Edmund “Whereupon she instantly desired her part- ner to lead her to the King and Queen” An Original Waterco- lour for Cinderella London, 1910 [45497] A large original ink and watercolour painting on artist’s board which illustrates the story of Cinderella, in Dulac’s 1910 gift book, The Sleeping Beauty and Other Fairy Tales . 317 x 259 mm. Signed and dated lower right (“Edmund Dulac 10”). In fine and unfaded condition. $85,000 An exceptional watercolour from what is generally regarded as Dulac’s finest work. “Mr Dulac’s illustrations are, of course, the reason for this beautiful book’s being. Mr Dulac, like Mr Rackham, has a genius for taking the classics of childhood and giving them a new interest for old readers. Children will probably object that he does not really illustrate the sto- ries, but merely uses them as a sort of screen upon which to throw his magic arrangements of bright and moony colours” (The English Re- view). A review of the Leicester Galleries exhibition stated that “in... Dulac’s watercolour illustrations to fairy tales... there is the same feeling for harmonious colour and decorative composition which has always dis - tinguished his art” (The Academy). In his study of Dulac, Colin White specifically compared this illustra - tion with “two other watercolours of similar encounters between lov - ers, drawn in 1912 and 1913 respectively, by Hugh Thomson and Kay Nielsen”. Ultimately, White concluded that “each illustrator has an en- tirely different approach; each in his own way succeeds admirably”, but in Dulac, “penwork is used mainly to define figures and objects, and it is the colour that is an essential element in modelling and in atmospheric effect” (White, p. 47). LITERATURE: The Sleeping Beauty and Other Fairy Tales Edited by Ar - thur Quiller-Couch (1910), p. 64. “A GREAT ILLUSTRATOR’S GREATEST SUCCESS” DULAC, Edmund STORIES FROM HANS ANDERSEN London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1911 [46674] First Dulac edition, deluxe issue, no. 383 of 750 copies, numbered and signed by Dulac. Large 4to. In the publisher’s full white vel - lum binding, with vignettes and titles embossed in gilt. Top edge gilt and others untrimmed. Silk ties lacking. Pictorial endpapers
with peacock design. Twenty eight mounted colour plates, all perfect and beautiful, the frontispiece is Dulac’s famous illustra- tion for the Princess and the Pea. The frontis has a tissue guard and all the other plates have captions on solid pages. Each text page has a decorative border in olive green. A near fine copy, mainly bright and clean, with just a small mark to upper cover. $3,500 The deluxe edition of this beautiful book, priced at £5 5/-, sold out almost immediately on publication. The book is advertised by the publishers as “from end to end a delight” and contemporary reviewers concurred. Sto - ries include some of the most popular fairy tales of all time; The Snow Queen, The Real Princess, The Little Mermaid and The Emperor’s New Clothes.
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