Once Upon a Midnight Dreary. Illustration to The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

Description

In Manet’s illustration for The Raven, a reader sits at the right of a table and lamp within a roughly hatched dark interior. Manet gives the opening of Poe’s The Raven a contained visual space, using the uneven dark marks to establish a setting around the seated figure. The illustration’s horizontal field lets the reader and source of light share one concentrated nighttime encounter.

Dated 1875, the lithograph belongs to Manet’s illustrations for the poem, with Poe credited as author and Stéphane Mallarmé as translator. Those roles remain distinct from the artist’s execution of the image. The work joins poetry with a medium capable of broad marks and immediate contrasts, bringing a written atmosphere into a visual field. Its appeal lies in that translation between forms, where a familiar line becomes something to encounter through looking as well as reading.

Read our guide to giclée prints, browse more Édouard Manet prints, or explore Open Here I Flung the Shutter.