Where to See Edmund Dulac

Edmund Dulac's work can be viewed in several museums internationally. In the United States, these include the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art (Winter Park, Florida), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (Minneapolis), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), and the Wolfsonian at Florida International University (Miami Beach). Another is the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond). In Canada, his art may be viewed at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. In the United Kingdom, Dulac's pieces can be seen at the Bakelite Museum (Williton), the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery (Brighton), the Geffrye Museum (London), the Manchester Art Gallery (Manchester), the National Museums of Scotland, Royal Museum (Edinburgh), the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford), the British^[1] Museum (London), the Brunei Gallery (London), the Sir Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art (London), and the Victoria & Albert Museum (London). In Europe, one can view Dulac's art at the Brangwyn Museum (Brugge, Belgium), the Clockarium Museum (Brussels), the Musée d’Art et d’Industrie (Roubaix, France), the Musée de l’Ecole de Nancy (Nancy, France), the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Paris), and the Musée des Beaux-Arts (Nancy, France).

Edmund Dulac (1882^[1]-1953^[1]) was a French-born, naturalised British^[1] book illustrator, stamp designer, and painter. Prints after Dulac's original art were often produced using methods such as etching. This process involves creating a design on a metal plate with acid, resulting in fine lines. The quality of fine art etchings was highly regarded, and from 1879 onward, magazines devoted to etching emerged. The Printsellers’ Association did not compel etchers to declare the number of proof impressions. This means that full details of edition sizes are not always available, unlike with mezzotints or line engravings. Some publishers turned to the Continent, where talented reproductive etchers were more affordable than their British counterparts. Collectors of wood engravings should look for early proof images. These are the clearest and most accurate, similar to "First State" impressions by Old Masters. Engravers typically printed fewer than ten proofs per image, sending one to the artist for corrections.

Edmund Dulac was a French-born, naturalised British^[1] artist who made his name as a book illustrator during the early 20th century. His illustrations are admired for their fairytale aesthetic, use of colour, and imaginative compositions, and they remain relevant because of his synthesis of various artistic influences. Dulac’s style incorporated elements of Art Nouveau, Orientalism^[1], and the Arts and Crafts movement. These diverse sources allowed him to create illustrations that appealed to a broad audience. His work helped to bring art into the common home through illustrated books and magazines. The commercial illustration world quickly adopted new developments in graphic art, using the novelty of new styles to lend modernity to products and publications. Dulac's images are still evocative of a particular period of transformation and the emergence of the modern, image-saturated world.

Edmund Dulac was a painter and book illustrator who worked in watercolour, among other media. The choice of materials available to an artist influences the character of their work; the same colour will appear differently depending on whether it is watercolour, oil, or tempera. Dulac's work demonstrates an understanding of this relationship between matter and form. In the eighteenth century, many artists experimented with different painting methods, including encaustic (using coloured waxes) and eludoric painting (using oil and water). These techniques aimed to improve the durability and appearance of paintings. Some involved fusing the final composition with a hot plate, while others used a thin film of water to judge the quality of brushstrokes. Such experiments reflect a broader interest in rediscovering the techniques of ancient painters and accommodating a growing demand for paintings among the bourgeoisie.

Edmund Dulac's influence can be traced through various artistic movements and individual artists. In the late 19th century, a renewed interest in wood-engraved illustration led to the emergence of artists like Laurence Housman and Charles Ricketts. They took Pre-Raphaelite illustration in inventive directions. Housman and Ricketts remain important figures in the Private Press movement, which produces limited editions of poetry and literature. This movement is based upon Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood models of tasteful design and restrained decoration. Additionally, the work of Edmund Sullivan, particularly his woodcut for the *Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam*, is noted as a source of inspiration for other artists. One artist saw Sullivan's work and thought, "This is cool," and then imitated it. The Pre-Raphaelite style, with its romantic and Italianate elements, also continued to influence artists into the 20th century. Sir Frank Dicksee, for example, created works in this style, while John William Waterhouse transitioned from neoclassicism to a more Pre-Raphaelite approach, echoing Rossetti's themes in paintings such as *Ophelia* and *The Lady of Shalott*.

Edmund Dulac's influences included a range of artistic movements and figures. The late 19th century saw a rise in art magazines, such as *The Studio*, the *Magazine of Art*, and *L’Artiste*, reflecting a renewed public interest in decorative arts and illustration. These publications helped to disseminate various styles and approaches. Several English book illustrators, including William Morris, Walter Crane, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Aubrey Beardsley, also impacted the artistic environment. Beardsley, in particular, was a driving force behind the spread of the Art Nouveau graphic style. His distinctive pen-and-ink illustrations were widely imitated. Dulac's work also connects to a broader tradition of illustration, where artists like Dürer, Hogarth, Goya, and Toulouse-Lautrec contributed to the development of illustration as an independent art form.

It is difficult to name one single work as Edmund Dulac's most famous, as his notability rests on his prolific output as a book illustrator during the early 20th century. He created artwork for a wide array of publications, including fairy tales, classic literature, and collections of poetry. Dulac's illustrations for stories from "One Thousand and One Nights" (also known as "Arabian Nights") are among his best-known works, as are his illustrations for the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, and the collected stories of the Brothers Grimm. His distinctive style, influenced by both Art Nouveau and Orientalism^[1], made him a popular choice for publishers seeking to produce deluxe editions of classic works. These editions helped solidify his reputation as one of the leading illustrators of the period.

Edmund Dulac's career puts him in contact with several movements. Born in 1882^[1], his early work has connections to the late stages of French Orientalism^[1], a style that had been in vogue since the early 1800s. The appeal of the "East" for European artists grew from events such as Napoleon's Egyptian campaign (1798-1801^[1]), the Greek struggle for independence in the 1820s, and France's campaign in Algeria from 1830. Artists created images of North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, and the Levant, sometimes from direct experience, and sometimes from imagination. Orientalist works often presented an imagined combination of exoticism, savagery, and sensuality. By the late nineteenth century, however, the critic Jules Castagnary declared that Orientalism was dead. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 made travel to the East more common. This accessibility meant that later Orientalist pictures became less anecdotal, and more infused with mysticism. Dulac's later work moved away from this style, as he became a naturalised British^[1] citizen in 1912^[1] and worked as a book illustrator in a decorative style, influenced by Art Nouveau.