The Eastwind flew faster still - Edmund Dulac

An evocative watercolour illustration by Edmund Dulac, depicting a scene from Hans Christian Andersen's The Garden of Paradise.

This illustration by Edmund Dulac depicts a scene from Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, The Garden of Paradise. It captures the moment the Eastwind carries a prince across the sky towards the mythical garden. Dulac, a master of early twentieth-century book illustration, employs a delicate watercolour technique that balances narrative clarity with atmospheric depth. The composition focuses on the dynamic movement of the Eastwind, whose large, feathered wings dominate the upper portion of the frame. Below, a stylised town with domes and minarets is rendered in muted tones, suggesting a distant, exotic geography.

Dulac's work is defined by his ability to synthesise diverse visual influences. His training in France and subsequent career in London allowed him to integrate elements of Persian miniature painting and Japanese woodblock prints into his European illustrative style. The figure of the Eastwind displays a specific attention to costume and character, reflecting the artist's interest in theatricality and folklore. The colour palette remains restrained, relying on soft blues, greens, and earthy browns to create a sense of ethereal flight. This piece was produced during the height of the gift-book era, a period when high-quality colour printing allowed artists to reach a wide audience through luxury editions of classic literature. The precision of the line work and the subtle layering of washes demonstrate the technical rigour Dulac brought to his commercial commissions. By focusing on the interaction between the figures and the vast space they occupy, the image conveys the scale of the journey described in the original text. It remains a representative example of the decorative and imaginative approach that defined the British illustration tradition in the early 1900s.