Dec 15, 2022 - Sale 2625

Sale 2625 - Lot 156

Price Realized: $ 3,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000

HENRY JUSTICE FORD (1860-1941)

"The Princess of Babylon and the Phoenix."

Illustration for The Strange Story Book by Andrew Lang (London: Longmans, Green, 1913). Watercolor, pen, and ink on paper. 279x118 mm; 11 1/2x7 1/4 inches, image, on 15x11-inch sheet. Signed "H. J. Ford" in lower left image, captioned along lower border and less formally, in lower left margin.

Provenance: Kendra Krienke; private collection, Maine.

Ford was a prolific and successful English artist and illustrator, active from 1886 through to the late 1920s. Sometimes known as H. J. Ford or Henry J. Ford, he came to public attention when he provided the numerous beautiful illustrations for Mrs. Andrew Lang's Fairy Books, which captured the imagination of a generation of British children and were sold worldwide in the 1880s and 1890s. Although Mrs. Lang wrote most of the tales and her famous husband only provided the introductions, these are known as the Andrew Lang Color Fairy Tales. This beautiful image of the Princess and the Phoenix was also reproduced as a lithograph.