Complete group of five original signed publisher's artworks by John Riddle Burgess, comprising the finished dust-jacket design and four illustration boards created for Escott Flynn's classic 1935 adventure novel The Red Spears of Honan.
Bibliographic Details
Author: John Riddle Burgess (illustrator).
Title: Original artwork for The Red Spears of Honan by Escott Flynn.
Publisher: W. & R. Chambers Ltd.
Date: 1935.
Medium: Original gouache and body colour on artist's board.
Quantity: Five original artworks comprising one dust-jacket design and four interior illustrations.
Signatures: Each signed "J. R. B." by the artist.
Sizes: Jacket artwork mounted, overall 39 × 27 cm, painting approximately 27.5 × 28.5 cm; four illustration boards each approximately 30 × 23 cm.
Condition
Very Good. Light age-toning to edges of boards, but painted areas visibly unaffected. All five artworks remain bright and attractive with strong original colour. The dust-jacket artwork is preserved within its original production mount. The four illustration boards retain their contemporary editorial pencil captions and placement instructions to the margins, reflecting their direct use in the book's production process. Please study the photographs carefully as they form part of the description.
Description
A rare opportunity to acquire the complete surviving group of original publisher's artwork created by John Riddle Burgess for Escott Flynn's popular adventure novel The Red Spears of Honan, published by Chambers in 1935.
The collection comprises the finished artwork prepared for the book's striking dust jacket, together with the four original tinted illustrations reproduced as full-page plates within the published volume, including the designated frontispiece. Finding even a single original illustration from an inter-war adventure novel is uncommon; the complete artistic suite for a publication is decidedly scarce.
Executed in gouache and body colour on artist's board, each painting is signed "J. R. B." and displays Burgess's accomplished handling of dramatic composition, strong colour and atmospheric lighting. The larger jacket design possesses particular visual impact, capturing the excitement and exoticism that characterised British juvenile adventure publishing during the 1930s.
The four illustration boards retain their original editorial production markings, including pencilled page references indicating their intended positions within the book, together with manuscript captions identifying the scenes depicted. Among these are:
Such production annotations provide a fascinating insight into the publishing process, demonstrating that these are not later presentation pieces but the actual working originals supplied to Chambers for photographic reproduction.
John Riddle Burgess was one of the accomplished illustrators working during the golden age of British juvenile publishing, and his energetic compositions perfectly complement Escott Flynn's tales of adventure in the Far East. Original artwork by illustrators of this period has become increasingly sought after by collectors of illustration, children's literature and publishing history, particularly when it can be directly linked to a specific published work.
Complete groups of original jacket and plate artwork rarely survive together, many having been dispersed or discarded by publishers following production. The present collection therefore represents an unusually complete record of the artistic creation of a 1930s illustrated adventure novel.
Notes
A highly desirable archive for collectors of original book illustration, publisher's artwork, British juvenile fiction, dust-jacket art and the work of John Riddle Burgess. Particularly attractive as a complete production group preserving both the finished jacket design and the original illustrations used throughout the published book.