The Queen of Sheba (from L’Illustration, no. de Noel)

1911

The Queen of Sheba (from L’Illustration, no. de Noel), 1911. Edmund Dulac (British, 1882–1953). Pen and brown ink and watercolor and gouache; sheet: 31.6 x 25.4 cm (12 7/16 x 10 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of James Parmelee 1940.738 A celebrated artist of the golden age of British book illustration, the French-born Edmund Dulac was inspired by Persian miniatures and manuscript illustration. This watercolor was one of a series of four scenes painted to accompany a poem by André Dumas, Figures of the Orient. Dulac depicted legendary enchantresses of the East: Circe, Salome, Scheherazade, and here, the Queen of Sheba. Aloft a camel, the dark-haired beauty languorously surveys the arid landscape as she and her entourage approach the Holy Land. Vibrant silks spill out of the queen’s gold and lapis howdah, a veritable mosaic of texture and pattern. Edmund Dulac was such a devoted Anglophile that as a student his contemporaries referred to him as "l'Anglais" (English).