No particular Price Taggy reason for this, except I was drawn to the images from a collection of Scandinavian fairy tales, illustrated by Danish artist Kay Rasmus Nielsen (1886-1957):
Originally published in 1914, this magnificent tome of 15 stories features 25 color illustrations, along with a slew of black-and-white ones, in Nielsen’s singular style of haunting whimsy.
‘The North Wind Went Over the Sea’
‘The Lad in the Bear’s Skin, and the King of Arabia’s daughter.’
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Very much in the Art Nouveau style of the pre-Great War era – the best known English artist no doubt being Aubrey Beardsley.
A Dane, Kay Nielsen in 1939 left for California and worked for, among others, Walt Disney, where his work was used in the “Ave Maria” and “Night on the Bare Mountain” sequences of Fantasia. And it shows.
His work went out of fashion, and he died in Los Angeles in poverty.
Looks like a lot of Japanese woodblock influence in his work too. Very nice.