From Szeged to illustrated gift books
Pogany was born in Szeged in 1882. He made his reputation during the flowering of illustrated gift books in Britain before the First World War. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was followed by Tannhäuser, Parsifal and The Tale of Lohengrin. These commissions allowed him to carry a design through an entire volume, from the handwritten text to the small ornaments around it.
After moving to the United States in 1914, he continued illustrating while taking commissions for stage scenery and costumes. He worked for the Metropolitan Opera and later for film studios in Hollywood. In his final years he published practical books on drawing. The range of those commissions carried an artist associated with decorative books into theatres, film sets and art classrooms.
The people behind the illustrated legends
For Tannhäuser, T. W. Rolleston supplied the retelling and Pogany built a visual world around it. Dense borders and changing page colours accompany the movement from Venus’s realm to pilgrimage and judgment. In The Children of Odin, Padraic Colum tells the Norse stories, while Pogany gives Odin and the other figures their illustrated forms. His Rubáiyát surrounds Edward FitzGerald’s English verses with ornamental lettering and painted scenes. Each collaboration gave him a different relationship between a picture and the words beside it.
