Clara Tice- bohemian illustrator of Pierre Louys

Clara Tice (1888-1973) was an American avant-garde illustrator and artist whose bohemian lifestyle and daring artwork often caused scandal during her life-time.  She was the first woman in Greenwich Village to bob her hair (in 1908), and her generally decadent look and conduct led to her being known in New York as the ‘queen of Greenwich Village.’ Her reputation only increased when, in 1915, the Society for the Suppression of Vice tried to confiscate some of her art from a display at the well-known bohemian restaurant Polly’s.

‘Nudes in a bath’

Tice was briefly married, but much of her output depicted naked women, meaning that she’s widely regarded as a lesbian artist today. Certainly, one of her watercolour sketches shows two women embracing in bed and readers may judge for themselves from other examples of her work.

Women Bathing

Tice, an untitled drypoint etching

During the 1920s, she received some seven commissions to illustrate erotic books, which included La Fontaine’s Tales and Boccaccio‘s Decameron. Amongst the illustration work Tice undertook were plates for editions of Pierre Louys’ Aphrodite, an edition of The Adventures of King Pausole in 1926 and for Twilight of the Nymphs (1927). In these colour plates, she repeatedly celebrated youthful female bodies; her ideal appears to have been the athletic and young woman, for she drew slim, curvaceous and pretty girls like this, with long ringleted hair, repeatedly.  One plate for Twilight of the Nymphs, for example, shows a bevy of naked girls, gathered in a line with their arms interlinked (see below).  At the same time, though, Tice’s style was innocent- colourful and almost childish- with her figures’ eyes reduced to round black dots. To a considerable degree these simple, bright images, playful and almost cartoonish as they are, leaven the sexuality she was being asked to reflect in the texts.

Plate from Roi Pausole

from ‘Twilight of the Nymphs’

Twilight of the Nymphs was a collection of retellings of classical myths, published by Louys between 1893 and 1898. Their theme reflects his deep interest in and familiarity with classical culture and literature- to the extent that he chose to produce his own versions, which are based upon- but depart quite noticeably- from the originals that inspired them. The stories are framed as if they are being told to each other by a group of travellers as they rest at night.

Despite the title of the collection, the stories are by no means all about nymphs. Ariadne concerns the princess abandoned by Theseus on Naxos and rescued by Dionysos- although in Louys’ version, the outcome is actually rather violent. Danae is told as a continuation of the story of the mother of Perseus, impregnated by Zeus in a shower of gold, and The House Upon the Nile- or the Semblance of Virtue in Women actually has no basis in Greek myth at all; it is entirely a story invented by Louys, and as such betrays some of his typical interests- with the more relaxed sexual attitudes and customs of the ancient past coupled with his not always admirable treatment of race or of women.

Two stories do deal with nymphs. Byblis is the bitter tale of the two children of the nymph, Cynas, who are called Byblis and Caunos. The brother and sister fall in love with each other and their mother resolves to separate them for their own good. The boy is taken away by a centauress, leaving Byblis bereft. She tries to follow him, but becomes lost and dies of despair. In its bleakness, the story is pure Greek myth; in its incest theme, it’s pure Louys.

Lastly, we have the story of Leda, the nymph made pregnant by Zeus- this time in the form of a swan. Leda is a naiad and is definitely not human:

“She really was most blue for, in her veins, ran the blood of the iris and not, as in yours, the blood of roses. Her nails were bluer than her hands, her nipples bluer than her breasts; her elbows and her knees were wholly azure. Her lips shone with the colour of her eyes, which were blue as the deep water. As for her flowing hair, it was sombre and blue as the nocturnal sky and quickened so along her arms that she seemed to have wings.”

Louys tells the story of this innocent’s seduction by the god very tenderly, whilst Tice’s illustrations are rich and charming, although they may not capture the otherworldly beauty of Leda in the same way as the plates designed by Paul-Albert Laurens for an edition of 1898.

For details of my essays on the French interwar illustrators, and other areas of art history, see my books page. For further information on all of Pierre Louys’ books, see my bibliography page for the author.

from ‘Twilight of the Nymphs’