Chris Beetles Gallery

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Justice Harbottle

Edward Ardizzone (1900-1979)

Price

£4,500

Signed

Signed with initials and inscribed with title

Medium

Watercolour with pencil

Dimensions

7 ½ x 11 inches

Exhibited

'The Illustrators: The British Art of Illustration 1791-2024', Chris Beetles Gallery, London, November 2024-January 2025, no 131

Mr Justice Harbottle appears as the third of five Sheridan Le Fanu stories in In A Glass Darkly, first published in 1872. An edition illustrated by Edward Ardizzone was published by Peter Davies in 1929 in ‘The Covent Garden Library’, though the present illustration does not feature.

Sheridan Le Fanu’s story centres around Elijah Harbottle, a corrupt and cruel judge in the Court of Common Pleas who has sentenced many innocent men to death. He finds himself haunted by vengeful spirits and supernatural beings, and in a disturbing dream he is condemned to death by a monstrous doppelgänger.

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