Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1882 Toulouse, France

Died: 1953 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1904

Other name/s: Edmond Dulac

Biography

Illustrator, painter and designer Edmund Dulac was born Edmond Dulac in Toulouse, France, in 1882. Influenced by his father, who was a commercial traveller in textiles and a minor art dealer, and his uncle, who sold Japanese prints, Dulac expressed an early interest in art. His parents, however suggested he study law, while simultaneously attending classes at the city's École des Beaux-Arts, where he discovered the work of Aubrey Beardsley, Edward Burne-Jones, Walter Crane and William Morris. After winning the first of many art prizes, he abandoned his legal studies, completing a three-year course at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1903 and briefly attending the Académie Julian in Paris the following year. An Anglophile, Dulac took English lessons, habitually dressed in the English fashion – tight trousers, spats, white gloves, and a cane – and gained the nickname 'l'Anglais'. In December 1903 Dulac married the American-born Alice May de Marini, but their marriage quickly dissolved, and by 1904, he had left Paris for London to embark on his artistic career.

Dulac was an immediate success in England. Among his early commissions were sixty illustrations for the collected works of the Brontë sisters, produced for the well-known publisher J. M. Dent. Dulac also collaborated with the prestigious Leicester Galleries, regularly submitting works for their annual exhibitions; and with the publishers Hodder and Stoughton, who acquired the rights for multiple artworks by Dulac for their illustrated gift book series. Under this arrangement Dulac produced, among others, illustrations for Sinbad the Sailor and Other Stories from the Arabian Nights, The Tempest and The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. The exotic stories he illustrated allowed him full reign to develop his skills in a number of directions including a lyrical sense of tone and composition, as a miniaturist and also as a caricaturist, inspired by Japanese prints, with their flat colour and asymmetry, and the high detail and colour of Indian and Persian miniatures. During this period, Dulac became a member of the London Sketch Club and formed lasting friendships within cosmopolitan London circles, particularly with the philanthropist and collector Edmund Davis. In 1911, he married the violinist Elsa Arnalice Bignardi, and the following year the couple moved into a studio in Ladbroke Road. Dulac flourished in the social and artistic world of this part of London, where nearby at Davis's house, he met the artists Charles Ricketts, Charles Shannon, Glyn Philpot and others, as well as the pianist Arthur Rubinstein and the poet W. B. Yeats, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. Dulac became a British citizen in 1912.
During the First World War he worked for the war effort, designing stamps and gift books for charity, posters and other ephemera, for little or no money. Hodder and Stoughton asked him to prepare a compilation of his own favourite artwork. Published at the intentionally low price of three shillings to guarantee commercial success, Edmund Dulac's Picture-Book of the French Red Cross made an outright profit of one thousand pounds, all of which went to the war effort. From 1919 he made caricatures for The Outlook and produced a series of society portraits.

After the war, following reduced publishing opportunities and the end of his collaboration with The Outlook, Dulac turned to theatre. He composed music for a production of Yeats's At the Hawk's Well. Yeats, Dulac and Ezra Pound also staged a number of Japanese plays, with Dulac responsible for costume and set design, make-up, and music. He also designed productions for C. B. Cochran and Thomas Beecham. From 1924 Dulac illustrated covers of The American Weekly, a collaboration which lasted for 25 years and took his work to audiences across the United States. In 1923 Dulac separated from his wife and lived until his death with the British writer Helen Beauclerk, whose books he illustrated. In 1939 the couple moved to Morcombelake in Dorset, where they lived until 1944. By the Second World War, Dulac had become the leading authority on postage stamp design. Among others, he designed postage stamps issued to commemorate the Coronation of King George VI in 1937, the 1948 Summer Olympics and the Festival of Britain in 1951. At the close of his career, Dulac returned to illustrating children's books. He was in the middle of one such project when he suffered his third heart attack and died at St Mary's Hospital, London, in 1953. His work is held in many collections including the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Related books

André-François Ruaud, Edmund Dulac (Bordeaux: Les moutons électriques, 2017)
Kristina Krüger, Studien zu Edmund Dulac (Marburg: Tectum Verlag, 2014)
Pierre Nouilhan, Edmund Dulac 1882–1953: de Toulouse à Londres (Rodez: Éditions du Rouergue, 2008)
Rodney K. Engen, The Age of Enchantment: Beardsley, Dulac and their Contemporaries 1890-1930 (London: Scala, 2007)
Jeff A. Menges, Dulac's Fairy Tale Illustrations in Full Color (Mineola: Dover Publications, 2004)
Ann Conolly Hughey, Edmund Dulac. His Book Illustrations: A Bibliography (Potomac: The Buttonwood Press, 1995)
Anthony Burton (ed.), Edmund Dulac, 1882–1953 (Sheffield: Sheffield City Art Galleries, 1982)
Colin White, Edmund Dulac (London: Studio Vista, 1976)
David Larkin (ed.), Edmund Dulac (London and Toronto: A Peacock Press/Bantam Book, 1975)
Reginald Howard Wilenski, Catalogue of a Memorial Exhibition of Watercolours and Drawings by Edmund Dulac (London: Claridge, Lewis & Jordan, 1953)
Mary C. Crary, The Daughters of the Stars (London: Hatchard & Co, 1939) (illustrations by E. Dulac)
Helen Beauclerk, The Love of the Foolish Angel (New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1929) (illustrations by E. Dulac)
Helen Beauclerk, The Green Lacquer Pavilion (London and Glasgow: W. Collins, Sons & Co., 1929) (illustrations by E. Dulac)
Edmund Dulac, Edmund Dulac's Picture-Book for the French Red Cross (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1915)
Wilhelm Michel, 'Edmund Dulac', Die Kunst, No. 27, 1913
Edgar Allan Poe, The Bells and Other Poems (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1912) (illustrations by E. Dulac)
Ali Baba and Other Stories from the Arabian Nights (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911) (illustrations by E. Dulac)
The Sleeping Beauty and Other Fairy Tales, from the Old French (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1910) (illustrations by E. Dulac)
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1909) (illustrations by E. Dulac)
William Shakespeare, Comedy of The Tempest (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1908) (illustrations by E. Dulac)

Public collections

Related organisations

École des Beaux-Arts, Toulouse (student)
Académie Julian (student)
Hodder and Stoughton (illustrator)
J. M. Dent (illustrator)
London Sketch Club (member)
American Weekly (illustrator)
The Outlook (caricaturist)

Selected exhibitions

Crossing Borders, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull (2018–19)
Memorial Exhibition of Watercolours and Drawings by Edmund Dulac, Leicester Galleries, London (1953)
British Art in History, Royal Academy of Art (1935)
Royal Academy of Arts: 167th Exhibition (1935)
International Society of Sculptors, Painters & Gravers: 29th London Exhibition (1925)
Somebodies. Cartoons and Watercolours by Edmund Dulac, Leicester Galleries, London (1920)
Imperial War Museum: the Nation's War Paintings and other Records, Royal Academy of Art (1919)
Exhibition of Watercolour Drawings Illustrating 'The Arabian Nights' and 'The Queen of Roumania's Fairy Tales' by Edmund Dulac, Leicester Galleries, London (1915)
Exhibition of Watercolour Drawings Illustrating 'Princess Badoura' by Edmund Dulac, Leicester Galleries, London (1913)
Watercolours Illustrating the 'Poems of Edgar Allan Poe' by Edmund Dulac, Leicester Galleries, London (1912)
Watercolour Drawings Illustrating 'Stories from Hans Christian Anderson' by Edmund Dulac, Leicester Galleries, London (1911)
Exhibition of Watercolour Drawings Illustrating 'The Sleeping Beauty and other Fairy Tales' by Edmund Dulac, Leicester Galleries, London (1910)
Watercolours Illustrating 'Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam' by Edmund Dulac, Leicester Galleries, London (1909)
Watercolour Drawings Illustrating Shakespeare's Comedy 'The Tempest', Leicester Galleries, London (1908)
Watercolour Drawings From 'The Arabian Nights' by Edmund Dulac, Leicester Galleries, London (1907)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Edmund Dulac]