der Teniers, Hieronymus Bosch,
Breughel, Goya, and among later artists, Rops, Toulouse-Lautrec, and
Aubrey Beardsley, are apparent everywhere in Kubin's work. Neither is
Rembrandt missing.

Beardsley is, perhaps, the most marked influence, and not for the
best, though the Bohemian designer is a mere tyro when compared to the
Englishman, the most extraordinary apparition in nineteenth-century
art.

Kubin has illustrated Poe--notably Berenice; of course the morbid
grimace of that tale would attract him--Gerard de Nerval's Aurelia,
Maerchen by W. Hauff, and his own volume of short stories entitled,
Die andere Seite, written in the fantastic Poe key and with literary
skill. The young artist is happy in the use of aquatint, and to judge
from his colour combinations one might call him a rich colourist.
Singularly enough, in his woodcuts he strangely resembles Cruikshank,
and I suppose he never saw Cruikshank in his life, though if he has
read Dickens he may have. In his own short stories there are many
illustrations that--with their crisp simplicity, their humour and
force--undoubtedly recall Cruikshank, and a more curious combination
than the English delineator of broad humour and high animal spirits
and the Bohemian with his predilection for the interpretation in black
and white of lust, murder, ghosts, and nightmares would be hard to
find. Like Rops, Kubin is a devil-worshipper, and his devils are as
pleasant appearing as some of the Belgian's female Satans.

I've studied the Sansara Blaetter, the Weber Mappe, and Hermann
Esswein's critical edition of various plates, beginning with one
executed when Alfred was only sixteen; but in it may be found his
principal qualities. Even at that age he was influenced by Breughel.
Quaint monsters that never peopled our prehistoric planet are being
bound in captivity by dwarfs who fire cannon, stab with lances, and
attack enemies from the back of impossible elephants. The portrait of
what Kubin calls his muse looks like a flamingo in an ermine skirt
posing previous to going to jail. Then we see the shadow, a monstrous
being pursuing through a lonely street at night a little burgher in a
hurry to reach his bed. The "shudder" is there. Kubin has read
Baudelaire. His Adventure resembles a warrior in No Man's Land
confronted by a huge white boa-constrictor with the head of a blind
woman, and she has a head upon which is abundant white hair. Puerile,
perhaps, yet impressive.

I shall s