EDMUND DULAC His American Weekly Collection 1924-1951

In 1923, Edmund Dulac, the distinguished English artist, was contracted by the Hearst organization to paint watercolors for The American Weekly magazine, the Sunday supplement for the newspapers. The contract lasted nearly 30 years. Dulac painted 106 watercolors from 1924-1951 for thirteen different series in The American Weekly. This is Dulac’s largest body of work, and has never before been assembled -- and it's some of his finest work! This includes all full color illustrations used for the front covers and several that were never published. All the images have been restored and printed with high quality inks. The introduction was written by Dulac bibliographer Ann Hughey. Printed on newsprint, today very few of these Sunday supplements can be found. The compiler was helped by the huge library of Bill Blackbeard to complete his records of all of Dulac's work. Dulac was very proud of his work and in fact convinced Hearst to switch to better quality paper to better show off the magnificent paintings he was creating for various historical subjects. Although reproduced from printed sources, the quality of the reproduction here is high, sometimes better than the original printing! Dulac, along with Arthur Rackham and Kay Nielsen, was at the forefront of the Golden Age of illustrated books. His books were produced in high quality trade editions, with tipped in color plates, but also signed and limited editions, as were Rackham's and Nielsen's. But World War I brought an end to this wonderful era; so after 1918, this market abruptly disappeared. Dulac did create several more books in the following years, but nothing like his earlier work. So given the opportunity to have his work entering the households of millions of American homes (he was and remained a British artist, living in England), he embraced the opportunity and produced much of his finest work. Art historian Albert Seligman has worked very hard to put together this first-ever collection of the American Weekly paintings and a fine collection it is. - Bud Ann Conolly Hughey published her bibliography of Dulac's nearly 100 books herself in 1995 and it remains the best look at Dulac's complete work. She wrote his history of publishing in America for the introduction of this edition. She was also a collector of Dulac's books, paintings, drawings, stamps and correspondence, and has one of the most complete collections in the world. The American Weekly covers were often cited in her bibliography, and many were featured in full-color in the Dulac biography by Colin White. (Studio Vista, 1976). REVIEW by Albert Seligman My own involvement with The American Weekly covers was through a fortunate meeting with Ann C. Hughey, who published the complete Dulac bibliography (of his books) in 1995. At the time, I was an avid collector of Golden Age illustrators, and Dulac was my specialty. Ann wrote the American Weekly checklist for Colin White’s Dulac biography with all thirteen series and each issue by title and date. I was able to contact her through an East Coast book dealer, and she invited me to spend the weekend and see her collection. When I asked her to show me the American Weekly covers, she replied that no one has ever republished them since they first appeared. We thought it would be a worthwhile project to find and publish all the covers in one volume, for the benefit of fellow Dulac collectors and dealers. Of course, we didn’t know where to find the original covers, as most of the newspapers from the 20’s through the 50’s were long gone. I was living in San Francisco, and much of my book collection was provided by Bud Plant and Jim Vadeboncoeur, who were partners in the Incredible< Catalog, which Bud is still publishing today. Jim was planning to publish glossy magazines (Images) with Golden Age artists and had a small collection of American Weekly covers. (He wrote the American Weekly article for Wikipedia). Jim recommended I call Bill Blackbeard, who owned and operated The San Francisco Academy of Comic Art. Bill had the largest collection of comic art in the whole country, although I didn’t realize it at the time. He had all the Dulac American Weeklies lying flat in his garage. Bill allowed us to remove the covers and have them professionally photographed. After Bill passed on in 2011, his entire seven-ton collection was removed to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at the Ohio State University. The photographers provided us with transparencies used to make the printing plates back in the days before digital photography. We contacted many publishers, but no one was interested in such a large full-color production. Reluctantly, we shelved the project, and Ann published her Dulac Bibliography in 1995. Thanks to the digital photography revolution, I was able to restore the illustrations and publish this edition, as well as The American Weekly Covers of Edmund Dulac 1924-1951 100th Anniversary edition in 2024. That edition replicates the full magazine front cover. For the complete collection, only the first cover of each series is presented, to show how the covers changed over the different series. All the illustrations are cropped and restored, with the original newspaper captions. Ann contributed an introduction highlighting Dulac’s earliest American publications. It is gratifying for me to have finished this project after so many years, and I hope Dulac and Golden Age fans enjoy his largest single body of illustrations. ~Albert Seligman