Sidney Stanley: A Query

My Lesser-Known Writers entry (from 2013) on the artist Sidney Stanley (1890-1956), linked here, has attracted a good amount of attention over the years.  Recently I got a query from a person who owns four original watercolour works by Sidney Stanley. The four pictures are related, and may perhaps have been done as illustrations to a book, or to some story in some periodical. But we don't know, really, and it's entirely possible the art was never published. With permission of the owner, I am presenting one of the four here. (Click on the illustration to make it larger.)  It is titled "The Gunpowder Factory"--a related image is titled "The Firework Factory."  The other two pictures are similarly associated,  "Teapot Factory" and "The Tea Ceremony." The strange-looking figures, with long faces and long noses and a single high curl to their black hair, are common to all four illustrations. Are these supposed to be elves of some sort (even their shoes come to curled points)?  Do these ring a bell for anyone?  Comments welcomed! 

Sidney Stanley

Sidney Stanley (b. Clapham, London, 14 August 1890; d. Marylebone, London, 5 February 1956)

**updated January 2016; and August & September 2020**

Very little is known of the painter and illustrator Sidney Stanley, the only child of Walter Stanley (b. c. 1858), a clerk at the Board of Trade, and his wife Viola Agatha, née Blenman (b. in Barbados, c. 1858), who were married in Lambeth, London, in the summer of 1889. 

from The Story of Buddha

Born Sydney Walter Stanley (all official records give his first name as “Sydney”), he signed his art as “Sidney Stanley”, and apparently used the spelling “Sidney” for all non-official purposes. The 1911 UK Census shows the family in Clapham, with Sydney listed as an “art student”. He exhibited with the Royal Academy in 1916 and 1922, and apparently was known for painting landscapes and murals. Here I shall discuss only his  five illustrated books, plus one other compilation in which his art appeared. In his last years he was active in the British Astronomical Association.  

His first book he co-illustrated with Gilbert James. It was Edith Holland’s The Story of Buddha (London:  Harrap, [August 1916]).  It contains nine illustrations, five signed by Stanley, three signed by James, with an unsigned frontispiece.  Oddly, James is given first billing despite Stanley having contributed more illustrations. 

The next book is perhaps his most significant in terms of his book illustrations, Serbian Fairy Tales, translated by Madame Elodie L. Mijatovich (London: William Heinemann, 1917; New York:  Robert M. McBride, 1918). It contains eight color plates (a few particularly excellent), and eight black and white illustrations. 

from "Satan's Jugglings and God's Might"

from "Bash-Chalek; or, True Steel"

Stanley was one of several illustrators to contribute to Puck Annual 1923 (London: Amalgamated Press, 1922), and his final illustrated books were for a series of pocket-sized classics published by Collins.

The first is Tales Grotesque (London: Collins Clear-Type Press, [March 1931]), by E.A. Poe.It contains five plates, but reprints contain only the frontispiece (the first one below).

Stanley’s next illustrated book was The Willows and Other Queer Tales (London: Collins Clear-Type Press, [February 1932], by Algernon Blackwood.  It contains five plates by Stanley, illustrating classic stories like “The Willows” (top) and “Ancient Sorceries” (second and third).  

Stanley's final illustrated book was The House with the Green Shutters (London: Collins Clear-Type Press, [March 1933], by George Douglas.  Here is the frontispiece*.

Stanley’s book illustrations deserve much more attention than they have hitherto received. 

*Thanks to Barbara Baran for supplying the four additional illustrations to the Poe volume, and for pointing out that The House with Green Shutters also appears to have five plates in its first edition, with the copies with only a frontispiece being reprints. [August & September 2020]