An illustrator behind conflicting life stories
Blaine was born in Albany, Oregon, in 1894. Local archival research has helped recover family and early records, correcting the uncertainty produced by later anecdotes. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction cautions that even recollections by friends cannot be relied upon uncritically: Blaine embellished accounts of his own life.
His book career is more firmly traceable. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice appeared with his illustrations in 1927, followed by Vathek in 1928 and Ewers’s Alraune in 1929. Beardsley’s influence is visible in the intricate line and erotic elements of this work. The Depression damaged his livelihood, and later commissions often came from smaller or non-mainstream publishers. Late in his career he illustrated Burroughs reissues. He died in 1969.
Pattern and pressure around an unsettling narrative
The held Sorcerer’s Apprentice names Hanns Heinz Ewers as author, Ludwig Lewisohn as translator and Blaine as illustrator. The opening conversation between Frank Braun and a priest introduces questions about knowledge, experiment and the manufacture of life or disease. Blaine’s pictures interpret a novel already engaged in provocation.
One landscape places dark, intricately branching forms around a distant villa and water. The opening into depth remains, but the near pattern makes it feel enclosed. A crowded figure scene uses another dense arrangement to turn display into unease. Large shapes establish the pressure before the smaller marks draw the eye inward. These are choices of illustration and atmosphere, distinct from Ewers’s narrative voice and from the English wording supplied by Lewisohn.
