“The Ice Maiden”
“And I dream in my waking dreams, and deep in the dreams of sleep.” – Fiona MacLeod
(this epigraph accompanied the 1915 edition of ‘The Dreamer of Dreams’)
“The Ice Maiden” is a beautiful watercolor and gouache on paper painting by the French illustrator, Edmund Dulac, from 1915.
Dulac created this piece as an illustration for The Dreamer of Dreams, a fairytale-like novel published by Queen Marie of Romania. This image served as the frontispiece and was printed with the accompanying words, “Everything about her was glistening white”.
In this story, a young artist, Eric, dreams about a woman’s eyes. He is so taken with the eyes from his dream that he loses all inspiration for his work. He begins a fantastical journey and gives up everything to find the woman from his dreams. He believes the eyes are essential inspiration for working on his masterpiece.
In this image, Dulac paints a gorgeous night scene. A woman all in white stands in the center, gazing back at the viewer. She is wearing a veil decorated with pearls that gives her an almost ghostly appearance. Two large polar bears stand on either side of the woman. She is silhouetted by the darkness of the night sky, pierced only by small but brilliant stars.
This scene of the ice maiden is from chapter 4. The full text reads, “Everything about her was white, glistening and shining; so shining that the human eye could hardly bear the radiance. Her long white hair hung about her; a circle of glow-worms surrounded her forehead. Her head was bent, still gazing on that which she held in her hand. On either side marched one of the great bears like two guardians.”
The Dreamer of Dreams is the second book written by Queen Marie of Romania. Dulac also illustrated her first book, The Stealers of Light, with much success. Queen Marie was the daughter of Prince Alfred, the second son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
Dulac’s favorite medium was watercolor and unlike other illustrators, he approached his work as a painter, using color to define and give shape to his images, rather than as a traditional illustrator who used ink to define their work. This makes his illustrations differ from those of his peers, such as Arthur Rackham.
The entirety of ‘The Dreamer of Dreams’ can be read online here.
For more on Edmund Dulac, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
