| Pogany, Willy | |
| William Andrew
(Willy) Pogany was gifted with myriad styles from which he selected the
appropriate (or created a new) one for each book he illustrated. And he illustrated literally a hundred or more. Born in Hungary in 1882, he came to American in 1915 via Paris (two years) and London (ten years). Along the way he established himself as a premier illustrator of books. |
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| While in London, he crafted his quartet of masterpieces: Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1910) and Wagner's Tannhauser (1911), Parsifal (1912) and Lohengrin (1913). Each of these is designed and executed completely by Pogany, from the covers and endpapers to the hand-calligraphed text to the pen & ink, pencil, wash, color and tipped-in color plates. The Coleridge was issued in a leather-bound limited edition, a trade edition and an American revised reprint in smaller format circa 1925. The Wagnerian trilogy was issued in a variety of bindings, all which were quite ornate and all designed by Pogany. The interiors featured the same extravagant details and efforts as The Rime. The set shown below featured 1/4 leather spines and matching gilt-embossed cloth covers in a matching cloth-covered slipcase. |
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 His
masterpiece has to be The Ancient Mariner. The large, 9.5" x 11.75",
format allowed Pogany to pull out all the stops. Each page is at least two
colors, sometimes with a gilt plate and usually an intricate border added.
Extra-elaborate initials started each page, with simply ornate capitals for
the beginning of each line (see the sample page at left). An illuminated
title page, 18 tipped-in color plates, the second color added to the black
and white plates, the flowing calligraphic text, and the numerous pen & ink
drawings throughout make this extra special.The soft ivory paper and subtle lavender borders of Rime (see image at right) and the 
three subtly different gray stocks of the Wagner books add an additional
depth to the presentations. Pogany used both to good advantage, setting soft
color pencil drawings against the grays in Lohengrin and using the
paper color as an added dimension in Tannhauser. The sheer variety of
media utilized in these four books is amazing. |
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| From ultra-soft pastel pencil drawings to superb watercolor paintings and stylish and stunning pen & ink, often with spot color added, Pogany never seemed to tire of flexing another artistic muscle to make these as impressive as any illustrated book of the day. Although he never reached these heights of intricacy again, he showed throughout his career that this stylistic variety was no fluke. | |
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 My
favorite aspects of all of his books are the pen & ink drawings. Don't get
me wrong, I really like the paintings, but there's a fluidity and commanding
presence demonstrated by his ink work, especially in these early
masterpieces, that is striking. Because of the rich variety of styles found
in these books, I decided to reduce the size of the images to share more of
them with you, starting with the full-size title-page from Parsifal,
at left and two other images at right and above. And because the mix of
styles and media is so great, I've opted to show more than one image from
the books. |
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| Each of the three Wagner books is a treasure: with every page illuminated, hand-lettered, and with an ornate initial and a repeating background design, as you can see in the sample spread of two pages shown here. Add all of the color plates, both tipped-in and lithographic, and the richness of images is intense. | |||
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book merits revisiting on a regular basis as new and beautiful aspects keep
revealing themselves. These come highly recommended in the original
editions. The smaller, later reprints are worth a look. The text is typeset
and the format is smaller, but they are an acceptable substitute, especially
when one considers the price. He did at least three different Rubaiyats (including one from 1909), three instructional books (Willy Pogany's Drawing Lessons, Willy Pogany's Oil Painting Lessons, and Willy Pogany's Water Color Lessons), many classics like Alice in Wonderland, Faust and Mother Goose, a Hungarian Cookbook, and even a colorful children's book called Peterkin written by his wife, Elaine. He worked in film, magazines, murals, and more. |
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 The Light of Asia (1932) |
 Peterkin (1940) |
 Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1942) |
 Willy Pogany's Oil Painting Lessons (1954) |
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| Information supplied by: http://www.bpib.com/pogany.htm | |||
