A short life of the author
Edmund Dulac (22 October 1882 – 25 May 1953) was a French-born British illustrator whose sumptuous colour-plate books made him, alongside Arthur Rackham and Kay Nielsen, one of the three supreme figures of the Edwardian gift-book era. His illustrations for the Arabian Nights, Shakespeare’s Tempest, the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, and Hans Christian Andersen combined Art Nouveau elegance, the luminous colour of Persian miniature painting, and the compositional daring of Japanese woodblock prints in a style of extraordinary refinement and decorative beauty.
Life
Dulac was born Edmond Dulac in Toulouse, France. He studied law at the University of Toulouse before turning to art, attending the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1904 he moved to London, attracted by the thriving market for illustrated gift books, and was naturalised as a British citizen in 1912. He changed the spelling of his first name to the more English “Edmund.”
He quickly found success with the publisher Hodder & Stoughton, which commissioned a series of deluxe illustrated volumes — produced as large-format quartos with tipped-in colour plates protected by tissue guards, printed in limited editions on handmade paper, and often signed by the artist. These gift books, sold at premium prices during the Christmas season, were the primary vehicle for fine illustration in the Edwardian era.
Beyond book illustration, Dulac was a remarkably versatile designer. He designed postage stamps (including stamps for Free France during the Second World War), banknotes, medals, playing cards, chocolate boxes, and theatre sets. He designed the coronation stamp of King George VI (1937) and continued designing stamps until shortly before his death.
The Illustrated Books
Stories from the Arabian Nights (1907)
Dulac’s first major commission and arguably his finest achievement. The fifty colour plates — depicting Sinbad, Scheherazade, Aladdin, and the other characters of the Thousand and One Nights — draw heavily on Persian and Mughal miniature painting. Dulac had studied Middle Eastern art intensively, and his illustrations achieve an authenticity of atmosphere that distinguishes them from the generic Orientalism of his contemporaries. The jewel-like colours, intricate patterns, and architectural detail create a convincing visual world.
Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1908)
Forty colour plates illustrating Shakespeare’s play. Dulac’s Prospero, Ariel, and Caliban inhabit a visually stunning island that combines classical and fantastical elements. The Tempest illustrations show Dulac at his most compositionally adventurous — several plates use Japanese-inspired asymmetry and negative space.
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1909)
Twenty plates illustrating Edward FitzGerald’s translation. Dulac’s Persian heritage research is evident — the illustrations are rich in authentic architectural detail, textile patterns, and garden imagery. The book is among the most beautiful editions of the Rubáiyát ever produced.
Other Major Gift Books
- The Sleeping Beauty and Other Fairy Tales (1910) — tales by Perrault, including “Cinderella” and “Bluebeard”
- Stories from Hans Andersen (1911) — Dulac’s illustrations for “The Snow Queen” and “The Nightingale” are particularly celebrated
- Princess Badoura (1913) — a single tale from the Arabian Nights, expanded with ten illustrations
- Edmund Dulac’s Fairy-Book (1916) — a compilation of fairy tales from various cultures
- Sinbad the Sailor (1914) — further Arabian Nights illustrations
- Tanglewood Tales (1918) — Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Greek myths retold
Style
Dulac’s style is distinguished from Rackham’s by its colour and exoticism. Where Rackham worked primarily in pen-and-ink with muted watercolour washes, Dulac used saturated, jewel-like colours and drew on non-Western artistic traditions — Persian miniatures, Japanese ukiyo-e, Chinese scroll painting — to create images of extraordinary decorative beauty.
His technique was watercolour and gouache on paper, sometimes with gold leaf. His colour harmonies — deep blues, rich golds, emerald greens, and warm earth tones — are instantly recognisable. His figures, particularly his female figures, have an Art Nouveau elongation and grace that reveals his debt to Alphonse Mucha and Aubrey Beardsley.
Critical Standing
Dulac is now recognised, alongside Rackham and Nielsen, as one of the masters of the Golden Age of Illustration — the period from roughly 1890 to 1920 when advances in colour printing technology enabled the production of lavishly illustrated books as art objects. The tradition was largely killed by the First World War and the economics of the interwar period.
Among the three great gift-book illustrators, Dulac is perhaps the most sophisticated in his use of non-Western sources and the most purely decorative in his sensibility. Rackham has the stronger line; Nielsen has the more startling compositional inventiveness. Dulac’s distinction is colour — no illustrator of the era used it with greater subtlety or more sensuous beauty.
Collecting Dulac
Dulac gift books are among the most collected illustrated books in the world. The deluxe signed limited editions command the highest prices:
- Stories from the Arabian Nights (1907, Hodder & Stoughton) — signed limited edition of 500 copies: $3,000–$8,000; trade edition: $500–$1,500
- The Tempest (1908) — signed limited: $2,000–$5,000
- The Rubáiyát (1909) — signed limited: $2,000–$4,000
Individual tipped-in colour plates, removed from broken copies, sell for $50–$200 each. Original watercolours by Dulac, when they appear at auction, bring $10,000–$50,000 or more.