Beauty and the Beast at supper (illustration for Beauty and the Beast), c. 1875
Eleanor Vere Boyle (1825 – 1916) illustrated poetry and prose by some of the most popular authors of her time. She regularly drew and painted using ink and watercolour, sketching landscapes, animals and her children from life. She also made drawings from her imagination, often reflecting spiritual themes.
This illustration is from Boyle’s 1875 retelling of Beauty and the Beast, a fairy tale where a woman is imprisoned by a monster and falls in love with him. Unlike other illustrated versions before or since, Boyle gave her beast walrus-like tusks and flippers.
In several of her illustrations, Boyle used shell gold – a mixture of finely ground gold powder and gum arabic (tree sap) that would have been stored in a shallow seashell.
In the final publication, the caption for this illustration reads, "After supper, every night, the Beast asked Beauty to be his wife: every night she said him nay."
