The hand

Ex Libris: the printed image and the art of the book, 2010

Blair Hughes-Stanton was a prolific illustrator of books in Britain during the early twentieth century. Despite this, his work is little known in contemporary contexts, given that much of it was made for private presses and released in limited editions. Like Paul Nash, Hughes-Stanton regarded himself as a kind of poet-artist, stating that:

I do seem to get my imagination from words. Even when doing things on my own, it comes to me in words like a poem, and I put it into forms. All the time that I work, I seem to feel word rhythms, and that is why I like to work to books.

Certainly, the artist’s illustrations for The Revelation of Saint John the Divine are rhythmic in conception; the fluidity of line creates a sense of continual movement which corresponds with the unremitting drama of Saint John’s apocalyptic prophesies. Like Dürer before him (whose illustrations of the same text appear on the opposite wall), The Revelation appears to have given free flight to Hughes-Stanton’s powerful imagination.

A year later, the artist produced a series of illustrations for Ida Graves’ poem, Epithalamion. Historically, an epithalamion was a song or poem written for a bride and while the adulterous relationship between Hughes-Stanton and Graves was socially condemned, their collaboration on the poem was a celebratory symbol of their love.

Elspeth Pitt, Assistant Curator, Prints, Drawings & Photographs