copyright; Curatorial Assistance, Inc. / E.O. Hoppe Estate Collection www.eohoppe.com
Alan Odle was an English book illustrator. His imaginative drawings are very powerful, but were not a success in his lifetime. In 2012 I published a book on him – The Life & Work of Alan Odle, which contains a biography, a bibliography, letters and artwork. This may be obtained from my other site www.booksandthings.co.uk. or ebay. Also available is my Bibliographical Checklist of the Work of Harry Clarke.
Martin Steenson
Pen & ink drawing for Balzac’s Droll Stories
The Continence of King Francis I (Head-piece)
? meets Aubrey Beardsley
Untitled pencil design 1920’s
Balzac’s Droll Tales pen & ink drawing c.1920
Pen & ink drawing for Candide (page 32)
On the back is a preliminary pencil sketch for the plate Mr Wasp at his Club (page 176)
Pen & ink design (c.1920) which was used in the article Alan Odle: Master of the Grotesque published in the Studio in January 1928. Odle sometimes drew several drawings on the same sheet, When these have been cut up later by persons unknown, the resultant paper is often oddly shaped.
Alan’s grave before and after I had it renovated
The dustwrapper by Alan for Dorothy’s The Trap (1925), with hand lettering. I stated in my book that Dorothy had offered Duckworth the possibility of an Odle dustwrapper for Dawn’s Left Hand and they had replied ‘that it is not now usual to add decorative jackets to the superior, intellectual type of novel’. At the time I did not know of the existence of The Trap dustwrapper, and had assumed all her dustwrappers were typographical, At the present time I can only find another dustwrapper, on Interim , which was indeed typographical, so Duckworth were reverting to typographical dustwrappers after publishing pictorial dustwrappers on The Trap and in 1926 on Oberland. The dustwrapper on the latter is by Allinson (presumably Adrian Allinson, the couple’s friend). This is also has hand lettering, which might be by Odle too.
Rather wonderful watercolour on silk that appeared in an auction some years ago. Unfortunately there was no image of the complete item.
An early drawing c.1910 where he uses Allan and his middle initial in the signature. Sorry for the poor quality of the image but I do not have the original.
A fine early pen & ink drawing c.1916
Pencil drawing 1920’s. Probably an un-used drawing for Vanity Fair.
A Round-Up in the Far West. Probably an un-used drawing for Vanity Fair. Courtesy Vincent Barlow.
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