BULL, Rene

“A triumph of charm and intuition”

An Irish born artist who studied engineering in Paris, Rene Bull was offered a job in the building of the Suez Canal, but chose instead to take drawing lessons from Caran D’Ache.  He made a living providing drawings and cartoons for Illustrated Bits and Pick-Me-Up but his breakthrough came in 1896 when he was offered the job of reporter and war artist for Black and White Illustrated Newspaper.  He travelled through the hot spots of Africa, India and the Near East, covering the conflicts of the time and introduced the British public to his clever and graphic drawings, for which he became very well known. Wounded in 1900, Bull was sent back to Britain and in 1905 started providing coloured artwork for illustrated books.  His interest in the art of the Orient and his first hand experience of Arabian costume combined with a rich colour palette and the strong lines learned as a war artist enabled him to create beautiful and ornate works of art and provided him with the inspiration for his two most celebrated books the The Arabian Nights (1912) and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1913).

 Please scroll down to see our current stock of first editions