Storytime, Dulac Edmund, Original Story Illustration, Early 1900s, Number 1

Number 1

Date: Early 1900s

Artist: Dulac Edmund

Paper Size: 220 x 150mm

Print Size: 165 x 125mm

Condition: Good

Technique: Lithograph

Price: $95

Description: Beautiful Dulac illustration printed in colour

Biography: 

Dulac Edmund

Dulac was born in Toulouse, France in 1882.  His artistic bent manifested itself early and drawings exist from his early teens. Many of these early efforts are watercolors, a medium he would favour through most of his life.

He studied law at the University of Toulouse for two years while attending classes at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.  Two years of boredom at the law school and the winning of a prize at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts convinced Dulac where his future lay. He left law school and enrolled full-time in the Ecole. He won the 1901 and 1903 Grand Prix for his paintings submitted to the annual competitions. A scholarship took him to Paris and the Académie Julien where he stayed for three weeks. That same year (1904) he left for London and the start of a meteoric career.

It’s important to understand the timing of Dulac’s arrival in London. Until the mid-1890s, there had been no economical method of reproducing color plates. Printing methods in those days varied from printer to printer and were most often patented – and were always being improved.

The invention of the process we now call “color separation” made it possible to mass-produce colour images and by 1905 they improved the process to create images that were very faithful to the originals. The only drawback was that they had to be printed on a specially coated paper and therefore couldn’t be bound into the book with the rest of the pages. They had to be tipped in. One of the earliest manifestations of this was Arthur Rackham’s Rip Van Winkle in 1905. The illustrated gift book was born just as Edmund Dulac arrived. Rackham was a grizzled veteran of ten years in the illustration business and Dulac was looking for his first assignment. How odd that these two men would dominate the new market.

To learn more go to: https://www.bpib.com/illustrat/dulac.htm