Art Gallery: The Worlds of Mervyn Peake | reviews, news & interviews
Art Gallery: The Worlds of Mervyn Peake
Art Gallery: The Worlds of Mervyn Peake
The centenary of the Gormenghast creator is celebrated in a new exhibition
Tuesday, 05 July 2011
Peake's 'The Mad Hatter's Tea Party', 1945All images © Mervyn Peake Estate
Best known for the Gormenghast Trilogy, Mervyn Peake, who died in 1968 and whose centenary is celebrated this year, was also an artist, an illustrator and a poet. As well as illustrating his own fiction (images 5-9), some of his finest drawings were for books by other authors. For grotesque satiric humour and Gothic sensibility he found a perfect match in Dickens, as his rather creepy illustrations for Bleak House beautifully attest.
Best known for the Gormenghast Trilogy, Mervyn Peake, who died in 1968 and whose centenary is celebrated this year, was also an artist, an illustrator and a poet. As well as illustrating his own fiction (images 5-9), some of his finest drawings were for books by other authors. For grotesque satiric humour and Gothic sensibility he found a perfect match in Dickens, as his rather creepy illustrations for Bleak House beautifully attest.
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