So haunted at moonlight with bat and owl and ghostly moth, 1902

Elizabeth Shippen Green (1871 – 1954) was an American illustrator whose work appeared in Harper’s Magazine and Saturday Evening Post. Her illustration of a young dryad (or wood nymph) balanced in treetop branches appeared in the 1902 publication of An Old Country House, by Richard Le Galliene. It shows the side of nature that few venture into - the mysterious and undisturbed nighttime:

“You can never know till you build your own nest high up in the boughs how much goes on within a seemingly idle tree during a summer day: all the hard work and the pretty play, the tragedies and comedies, the war that is waged and the love that is made, from morning till moonlight; so mirthful at morning with bands of singing birds, so haunted at moonlight with bat and owl and ghostly moth; and maybe, if you blow out your lamp and keep very still, somewhere about midnight the dryad who lives in a dainty cupboard down below will open her hidden door and steal up to peer in through the windows at the moonlit shelves.”

Charles Sheldon, Portrait of Peggy Hoyt, 1922

Charles Sheldon (1889 - 1960) was a prolific artist during the Grand Age of American Illustration. After studying under the legendary Alphonse Mucha in Paris, Sheldon set up a studio in New York City to paint stage portraits. His glamorous interpretations of Hollywood stars such as Clara Bow, Greta Garbo and Jean Harlow gained him many commissions to paint covers for the movie magazines of the day. Sheldon's Portrait of Peggy Hoyt is typical of his stylised Art Nouveau approach to portraiture.

Gustave Doré, The Raven, 1884

Gustave Doré, The Raven, 1884

Gustave Doré was a prolific artist and illustrator who worked primarily as a wood and steel engraver. In 1884, Doré produced 26 steel engravings for a special illustrated edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic poem ‘The Raven.’ This refined and beautifully haunting portrayal of the poem’s narrator mourning his dead lover indicates the artist’s sensibilities towards love, death and the heavenly woman. The softened lines and low key chiaroscuro of Doré’s illustration successfully captures the mood of Poe’s work: 

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore

Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

Andrew Loomis, Figure Drawing for All It's Worth, 1943

Andrew Loomis, Figure Drawing for All It's Worth, 1943

Andrew Loomis (1892-1959) was one of the most successful commercial illustrators of his generation. His artworks featured in Cosmopolitan, Saturday Evening Post, Ladies’ Home Journal and other national magazines. Loomis is best known as the author of several practical art books, including Figure Drawing for All It's Worth (1943). The make-up and hairstyles in many of his drawings are indicative of the glorious era in which they were published.