The world did Kay Nielsen dirty. He was of the Golden Age, but with Dulac was part of a slightly younger cohort than Rackham and the old guard. By far, the defining feature of his work is an embrace of detailed pattern to a degree that has perhaps never been rivaled. The level of detail in his work is beyond sumptuous and emphasized by a certain flattening of his compositions, which often remind me of sets for a stage play. Individual elements of his illustrations are extremely precise and orderly, but often turn chaotic as the page fills — all that potential energy bounces my eyes around ceaselessly.

This is Kay Nielsen (1975), one of David Larkin’s series of books focusing on Golden Age artists, a prime reason, I think, why he remains in the public imagination. I’d be willing to bet that Nielsen’s figures — pale, oddly proportioned, somewhat alien-looking and featuring a propensity for odd clothing choices, particularly hats — inspired Michael Moorcock’s Melniboneans. Or, at the very least, inspired the artists who illustrated them.

Late in life, he worked for Disney and receives much of the credit for the Night on Bald Mountain sequence of Fantasia, but also did production work for other films, including Sleeping Beauty (once you know this, I think, it’s impossible to not see his hand in Maleficent). Apparently his production work underpins sequences in The Little Mermaid and Frozen, produced 32 years and 56 years after his death. I find this supremely frustrating, considering Disney let him go in 1941 for being too dark; he struggled to find commissions after that and lived in relative poverty for the last decade and a half of his life. Rotten.