By H. Ospovat
By A. Rassenfosse
Fritz Erler, a German designer of much strength, has made a number of symbolic book-plates. All, I believe, have the feminine as motif, and in several the figures are nude. The design for Emil Gerhäuser is inoffensive and well-drawn, but surely is not beautiful, and lacks a good excuse for existence. In a generally pleasing decorative arrangement for Robert H. Smith, Harold Nelson, an English designer, shows a rather attenuated nude maiden looking with envy at a gorgeous peacock on the opposite side of the design; while the peacock in turn seems to say, “Why don’t you grow some feathers?”
We naturally expect to find well-drawn, if not always pleasing, nudes in the French school. Henry André, one of the best known French designers of book-plates, uses the nude quite freely in his work; in some instances pleasingly, but in one or two with marked vulgarity. Octave Uzanne has the most pleasing nude plate that I have ever seen. It is designed by Guérin, and represents a tortoise bearing the implements of the artist, and coaxed along by the hot torch of knowledge in the hand of a light-winged cupid. By Sherborn, the great, I have seen but one nude in a book-plate, and that a poor thing but innocuous, for Mr. Harris Fahnestock of New York. Mr. E. D. French has made but one nude that I have seen, that for Mr. E. H. Bierstadt; the design shows a nude shepherd boy piping to his flock. The plate Mr. French engraved for Mr. De Vinne, from the design by Geo. Fletcher Babb, has nude termini for bearers, and is elegant and beautiful, an ideal plate.
By H. Ospovat
American artists have essayed the nude but little in book-plate design, perhaps through wisdom, perhaps through [!-- original location of illustrations --] fear; but the fact remains that they have thereby avoided the perpetration of at least some crimes. Judging by the examples we have been able to cite, and they are representative, it would seem that the best advice we can give those tempted to use the undraped beautiful in their book-plates is—don’t.