Chris Beetles Gallery

(click image to enlarge)

The Blind

Eric Fraser (1902-1983)

Price

£850

Signed

Signed

Medium

Ink with bodycolour

Dimensions

4 ½ x 4 ¾ inches

Provenance

The Artist's Estate by descent

Illustrated

Radio Times, 10 March 1944, Page 6, for broadcast on the Home Service on Sunday 12 March 1944 at 9.30pm

Literature

Alec Davis, The Graphic Works of Eric Fraser, Uffculme: the Uffculme Press, 1985 (2nd Edition), Page 95;
Sylvia Backemeyer, Eric Fraser: Designer & Illustrator, London: Lund Humphries, 1998, Page 106

Exhibited

'The Illustrators. The British Art of Illustration 1870-2021', Chris Beetles Gallery, November 2021-January 2022, No 172

The Belgian Symbolist writer, Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949), wrote his one-act play, Les Aveugles, in 1890. It has been summarised by Martin Seymour-Smith in the following way: ‘the guide of a group of blind people drops dead, and they (humanity?) are left to grope in terror until they meet a stranger – death’ (Guide to Modern World Literature, volume 2, London: Hodder & Soughton, 1975, pages 60-61). The play was first translated from French into English by the American poet, Richard Hovey, in 1894. The version broadcast by the BBC Home Service on 12 March 1944 was translated by Edward Sackville-West. Maeterlinck influenced Sackville-West’s own writing, including his first novel, The Ruin (1926), and is considered a forerunner of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter.
Framed