Ivan Bilib­in

(Illus­tra­tion of Vasil­isa the Beau­ti­ful)

I thought while stuck at home I’d do regu­lar posts show­ing things I like which other people may not have heard of. Ivan Bilib­in was a Russi­an artist most famous for his lavishly illus­trated books of fairy tales taking inspir­a­tion from Japan­ese wood prints, Russi­an icon paint­ing and Ye Olde Slavon­ic script.

As his books are from the end of the 19th/​beginning of the 20th Century, they are now out of copy­right and avail­able scanned online. Obvi­ously the text is no good to anyone who doesn’t know Russi­an, but almost every page is illus­trated. Here’s a selec­tion (I’ve just given them numbers because lots of the titles are just Skazki Fairy Tales) :

• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six
• Seven