One was the executioner! M. de Nou they call him...And the other: Bombiste, his assistant. Two vultures of the guillotine.
Date1919
Artist
Arthur E. Becher
(American artist and illustrator, 1877–1960)
Illustration CitationRed Mark and Other Stories, by John Russell (New York: Knopf, 1919).
MediumCrayon and gouache on illustration board
Dimensionssheet: 29 3/16 × 21 1/8 in. (74.1 × 53.7 cm)
Credit LineGift of the estate of Frieda Becher, 1971
Object number1971-90
On View
Not on viewClassificationsDRAWING
Label TextThis story is set in the penal colony of New Caledonia, an island in the southwest Pacific annexed by France in the 1850s. Here the well-recognized executioner strolls the street, "his face white...and the glittering tiger eyes in the skull of him."
