Willy Pogany

Antique panorama children’s book illustrated by Willy Pogany and retold by Edith L Elias. A total of 14 panels, one side with illustrations, and the other with text. Published by George G. Harrap & Company. This book is part of a children’s series by Willy Pogány of folding panoramas illustrations and text, inspired by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1855 epic, The Song of Hiawatha. Lines from Longfellow run underneath Pogány’s illustrations, which follow the Ojibwe child Hiawatha from his early kinship with the wild animals, through his struggles with Nahma, King of Fishes, and his own estranged father, Mudjekeewis, up to his courtship of Laughing Water (Minnehaha). The prose text by Edith Elias, printed on the verso of the panorama, carries Hiawatha’s story farther, through the death of Minnehaha and the coming of “the Pale-Face Chief.” Pogány’s dynamic frames, with their striking use of negative space, show the influence not only of Golden Age illustrators like Walter Crane, but also the new generation of cartoonists like Winsor McCay...

Depicting a complex interplay of lithe nude figures in struggle, the upper male figure holding a large sword aloft, this rare print was made by the famed artist and illustrator, Will...