Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam @ 170
On the cover: Cornelis Huyberts (1669-1712), a plate from “Thesaurus Anatomicus” (1702) by Frederik Ruysch. (1638-1731). (Thanks Paul)
Jean-Marie-Mathias-Philippe-Auguste, comte de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam (November 7, 1838 – August 19, 1889) was a French symbolist writer. Villiers’ works, in the decadent/romantic style, are often fantastic in plot and filled with mystery and horror. Important among them are the drama Axel, the novel Tomorrow’s Eve, and the short-story collection, Sardonic Tales. He popularized the term “Android” (Andréide in French) in Tomorrow’s Eve and cruel tale in the epynomous collection. He is one of the authors featured in André Breton’s Anthology of Black Humor and is mentioned in The Symbolist Movement in Literature (Symons), The Romantic Agony (Praz), The Book of Fantasy (Borges), Fantastic Tales: Visionary and Everyday (Calvino), The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (Todorov), Genealogy of the Cruel Tale (Adair) and the World of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Moore).
The place where you have seen that image is in the book “The Waking Dream”, or “Quatre Siecles de Surrealisme : l’art fantastique dans la gravure”
P.
….. it is by Cornelis Huyberts (1669-1712), a plate from “Thesaurus Anatomicus” (1702) by Frederik Ruysch. (1638-1731).
P.
Thanks Paul, a great image indeed, wich shows it is many times worthwhile digging in art history to find great (and free) imagery to fill the contemporary world with visions that appear to be new.
Villiers is so hard to find in English, and my French is too poor to read him easily. I finally found a copy of Cruel Tales, and I was not disappointed! The translations are all out of print.