Edward Detmold and Maurice Detmold: Illustrations for Kipling's The Jungle Book

Edward Detmold (1883-1957),  Maurice Detmold (1883-1908).

Edward and Maurice Detmold, twin brothers, were talented illustrators by the age of 13, "From the age of five both boys showed an interest in drawing animals at London zoo and spent six months studying drawing at the Hampstead Conservatoire. Precociously talented, they first exhibited at the Royal Academy at the age of thirteen, attracting the attention of Edward Burne-Jones,". Their work was dedicated to the masterful illumination of animals in particular, and became highly sought after in Edwardian society. Many of their illustrations reflect influence from Japanese art, Albrecht Dürer, and the Art Nouveau movement. THE JUNGLE BOOK "The end result of this incongruous joining together of the quasi-scientific and the ornamental is an image which is both fanciful and often rather disturbing." (Diana Johnson: Fantastic Illustration and Design in Great Britain, 1850-1930).


Edward and Maurice published the plates for Kipling's The Jungle Book in 1903 when they were twenty years old, and five years before the illustrations were resized and published with the text.  

 

MOWGLI AND THE LONE WOLF
 Frontispiece

THE 'COUNCIL ROCK'

'AKELA' THE LONE WOLF

MOWGLI AND BAGHEERA

 MOWGLI LEAVING THE JUNGLE

 BALOO IN THE FOREST

 THE 'COLD LIARS'

 THE MONKEY FIGHT

KAA THE PYTHON

THE VILLAGE CLUB

 SHERE KHAN IN THE JUNGLE

THE RETURN OF THE BUFFALO HERD

 RIKKI - TIKKI - TAVI AND NAG

KALA NAG

ELEPHANT-DANCE

TOOMAI OF THE ELEPHANTS

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Sixteen Illustrations of Subjects from Kipling's "Jungle Book." London: MacMillan and Co., 1903. Folio. 16 chromolithograph plates (13 x17 inches)