“The Stealers of Light”
This lovely little watercolor illustration plate is by the French illustrator, Edmund Dulac. It is the frontispiece to the 1916 book titled The Stealers of Light: a Legend, which was written by Marie Alexandra Victoria, who was the Queen consort of Romania from 1914 to 1927, being married to Ferdinand I.
The caption to the illustration reads: “The light she had thought to extinguish had escaped from her dying hands and floated always farther across the desert, shedding its marvelous radiance over rock and stone”.
Dulac’s favorite medium was watercolor and unlike other illustrators, he approached his work as a painter, using color to define and give shape to his images, rather than as a traditional illustrator who used ink to define their work. This makes his illustrations differ from those of his peers, such as Arthur Rackham and is quite visible in this piece here. Dulac created just two mounted plate illustrations for this book.
During her life, Marie Victoria was an avid writer and published 34 short stories and books. Her original title was Marie of Edinburgh, as she was of the British royal family, and ‘The Stealers of Light’ was published by Hodder and Stoughton out of London two years into her reign. The book can be read in its entirety online at right here.
For more on Edmund Dulac, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
