[Kay Nielsen] | Costume design for Hindu Dancer, Aladdin, 1917-1919

[Kay Nielsen]

Costume Design for Hindu Dancer, Aladdin

205 x 100mm. (frame 539 x 436mm.), pencil and watercolour, heightened with gold, framed, drawing with old crease at lower margin

"The story of Aladdin was an invitation to a designer to lose himself in fantasy and dreams. 'Colouring and gold almost bordering on debauchery' commented The Studio on seeing some of the original studies for the costumes. Nielsen's method of costume design was very different from that of Edmund Dulac.... Nielsen was less meticulous about his preparatory work.... He knew instinctively what was important and what could be omitted in a design" (White).

LITERATURE:

reproduced in Colin White, Kay Nielsen: A Biography, forthcoming, fig.125, and discussed on pp. 147-151