Illustration for the Book "Little Lord Fauntleroy"

Alfred Zmuda

Basic information

ID: Г-V-2159.1
Author: Alfred Zmuda
Name: Illustration for the Book "Little Lord Fauntleroy"
Date of creation: 1921
Technique: drawing
Material: paper pen Indian ink watercolour
Dimensions (height x width, cm): 29.2 x 19.4

Additionally

Type: graphic art
Genre: illustration
Provenance: Purchased from D. Semchyshyn, 1988

Information about author

Author: Alfred Zmuda
Artist's lifetime: 1897–1966
Country: Poland
Biography: Alfred Żmuda (1897, Kraków – 1966, Kraków) – graphic artist, painter, illustrator. Studied at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts, graduating under the supervision of Józef Mehoffer (1924). Żmuda was closely associated with the Kraków art scene. Created oil and watercolour paintings. His main subjects were still lifes, landscapes, seascapes (in particular, a well-known series depicting ships and boats from the fishing port on the Hel Peninsula), genre scenes from Kraków, nude paintings, and religious themes. His early works combined the influence of the Young Poland movement, formalism, and Art Deco. The artist often used a muted colour palette, limiting himself to shades of blue and green with accents of red. Alfred Żmuda also created illustrations for newspapers and weeklies (particularly in the "Illustrated Courier of Civil Time"), books (e.g., for the works of Max Brand), letters, and greeting cards. In collaboration with Antoni Wasilewski, the artist also created figures for satirical nativity scenes.

Object description

The rectangular drawing is done in black ink and watercolours in crimson and blue-green colours. In the centre is a young man sitting in a chair. He is dressed in the traditional clothing of an English lord: a black frock coat with a white collar and white stockings, a lavish hairstyle, and long curly hair. The chair is decorated with carved legs in the shape of plant shoots, an oval backrest adorned with plant motifs, and finished with a coat of arms and handles featuring the heads of mythical animals on the ends. The soft part is decorated with crimson upholstery. The background is a blue-green oval with a black texture. The chair itself stands on a floor resembling small cobblestones. Above the drawing is a semicircular inscription in black ink: "Frances Burnett". Below the drawing is a crimson watercolour inscription: "Little Lord". The drawing is framed by a black rectangular frame. "Little Lord" ("Little Lord Fauntleroy") is the first novel for children written by Anglo-American writer Frances Hodgson Burnett, which quickly became famous and has remained one of the favourite books of children for decades. Alfred Zmuda created about a dozen illustrations and several cover designs for the book, which was published in 1923 in Lviv by Mykhailo Taran and translated by Varvara Litynska.

Inscriptions

At the bottom of the drawing, to the left of the chair leg, is the author's monogram in black paint: a stylised letter A inscribed in a circle; below it, in a semicircle, are the numbers "1921". Reverse: at the top right is an illegible inscription in pencil.

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Illustration for the Book "Little Lord Fauntleroy"

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