Unused Tailpiece Design for "The Duchess of Malfi"

Henry Weston Keen|John Webster|John Lane, The Bodley Head

ca. 1930 · Pen and black ink · Drawings and Prints

Keen worked as a printmaker and illustrator in the 1920s and 1930s, creating unsettling symbolist images reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley. Two significant commissions were designs for luxury editions published by The Bodley Head–a firm that had launched Beardsley in the 1890s–Oscar Wilde's "Picture of Dorian Gray" (1925) and John Webster's "The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi" (1930). After Keen's early death from tuberculosis, The Twenty-One Gallery in London held a memorial exhibition.

Artist

Henry Weston Keen|John Webster|John Lane, The Bodley Head

Date

ca. 1930

Medium

Pen and black ink

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1967