Lot 1756
‡ALAN ELSDEN ODLE (1888-1948)
PREPARATORY DRAWING FOR VOLTAIRE'S `CANDIDE`
Pencil on artist's board
30.5 x 44cm.
* George Routledge & Sons's edition of Voltaire's celebrated satirical classic appeared in 1922 and featured Odle's first published illustrations, for which this is a study. These were admired by the reviewer in the New Witness ("there is some soul of beauty in things ugly") but failed to appeal to the corespondent in the Times Literary Supplement who noted their inappropriately sinister and saturnine air. There is undoubtedly much to admire in his densely-worked technique, wherein mere graphite adopts the clarity and definition of a finely etched- or lithographed line. In addition, his mannered figures and strongly sinuous rhythms impart an elegant energy to his compositions. Subsequent reviewers were to praise Odle's "grossness of conception melded with penwork so flowing in line and velvety in quality that the result is sheer beauty". Odle himself was no less eye-catching than his meticulously designed drawings: he was ascetically thin as a result of tuberculosis; he favoured `Oxford Bags` and a careworn smoking jacket at all hours of the day; and wore his fingernails and his hair so long that the latter was wound around his head into a sort of turban.
Provenance: London, Victor Arwas Gallery, May 1999
