and they all have one thing in common...

but of course many of the sheet music covers owed a tremen- dous amount to japonisme with regards to style, not merely the ones with asian themes. we've got wiener werkstatte yiddisher boys and violin-playing clowns.

speaking of wiener werk- statte, we've also got a hymn to hawaii and some- thing involving vampires and tipperary.

there were the copycats.

and there were the real copycats. interestingly, it was gene buck who did the blue wilhelmina. buck was president of ascap for many years, and as well as his proli- fic illus- tra- tion work, he also wrote, or directed, or acted in plays, wrote the music too. i could find nothing else that copied anything else.

gene buck also did work that was just flat-out beautiful, as did many other artists, sung and... uh... unsung.

and then there are the ones that make you scratch your head and double-check the date: sapho (sic) (and she looks a little like me to me!) and, well, positively psychedelic!

some are just down- right, well, con- fused. (um... those are irises, not lilies) and.... (that's mt fuji, mate. you won't find that in hawaii).

and the ones you're just happy to find.

(by the way, i looked up lauterbach and it really does look a lot like this. but WAY LESS JAPANESE!)

with the diagonal structure, the dark outline, the all-over patterns, the blocks of color, the simplification of detail and line, and the appearence of being woodblocked rather than painted, these sheet music examples become prime illustrations of japonisme.

what we remember

michael often speaks about the fact that there are many wonderful artists from the past out there that just aren't known by many people at all today.












i think of his comments frequently as i go through various books, various collections. so many artists that i've never heard of, after studying this area for decades, and of whom only a tiny bit of work remains.









for many, the only work of theirs that is remembered, reprinted, is from Les Maîtres de l'Affiche. because they received a life outside of their lives as posters, they remain.










but i'm grateful that any remain at all. look at her blue eyes. see the whole collection at the nypl.


(the only remaining image i could find by alice r. glenny; the only image i could find by fred hyland; only two from otto fischer.)