'Kriemhild and the Falcon’

William Brown Macdougall

1897

Wood engraving

8½ x 5½ inches [detail of page]

Pictorial frontispiece for The Fall of the Nibelungs.

This illustration exemplifies Macdougall’s use of the language of Art Nouveau in which he emphasises the style’s characteristic features of swirling linearity, contrasts of positive and negative space, sinuous details (especially in the ornaments for the crown), and distortions of scale. The effect is one of preciousness and self-absorbed abstraction.

Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke. [Click on image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.]

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