“A hair perhaps divides the false and true,
Yes; and a single slip were the clue—”
But above all things a nude figure should never carry the idea of a consciousness of its nudity! Also, clothing or drapery used simply to hide portions of the figure is execrable and more suggestive than any entire absence of clothing; while to add, as I have seen done, a hat and French-heeled shoes to a nude figure is abominable beyond condemnation.
But all this is of broad application and is sawing upon the same old and frayed strings. Abstractly, a beautiful nude is as beautiful on a book-plate as in a portfolio or in a frame, and some of the most beautiful book-plates I have ever seen have been nudes. Nevertheless, to me the nude seems out of place and in questionable taste on a book-plate; the simple matter of repetition is enough to condemn it.
The partially draped figures by R. Anning Bell are chaste and beautiful, and one never thinks of them other than as clothed; so they can hardly be considered in this discussion. Many of the book-plates by Henry Ospovat contain partly draped figures which are always beautifully drawn, pure and a constant delight. But really, I think it would jar me to meet even an angel—the same one, mind you—in each of a thousand volumes. Emil Orlak, in Austria, has made some fairly pleasing nudes, but they lack that purity of conception without which they are common. Armand Rassenfosse, of Belgium, has etched a number of dainty, faultlessly drawn and really most beautiful nudes, but many of them have been ruined by the needless addition of shoes and fancy head-dresses. Pal de Mont, of Antwerp, has a plate by Edmond van Oppel which he probably thinks a work of art, but which is surely the height of vulgarity; while in “Composite Book-Plates” is a design by Theodore Simson containing a large figure of a nude woman with her hair done in a pug, seated in a grove amid dandelions and poppies, and diligently reading a book. The figure is treated in broad outline, which is ill adapted to the subject, and it lacks that refinement without which nothing is beautiful. She is absolutely at variance with her environment, and the whole is a tour de force quite unforgivable.
By H. Nelson
Miss Labouchere, in her volume on ladies’ plates, shows a rather amusing pair of designs for Miss Nellie Heaton. These plates both bear the legend, “Gather ye roses while ye may.” In the first, the designer, Mrs. Baker, has a fair creature in all the glory of entire nudity plucking blossoms from a rose-vine. In the other, she used the same design throughout, but has fully clothed the figure. Evidently Miss Heaton protested.
These designs by a woman call to mind the fact that among the book-plates of over one hundred and fifty women designers with which I am familiar, I know of but one other nude. This other is by Miss Mary Florence, and is of a large full-length angel entirely undraped.