Nowadays, in the search for visual diversity and self-expression, artists are creating ever more bizarre works of art that are awe-inspiring to the untrained viewer. But one should not think that everything used to be completely different. If in the real “big” art, that is, in the creation of all kinds of paintings, written in oil and available only to wealthy customers artists usually adhered to strict rules, and fortunately, not all, otherwise there would be no impressionists and avant-garde artists, and painting has not been enriched with new artistic styles, then in graphics and in such a frivolous genre, such as Christmas and greeting cards sometimes met works quite strange and unusual. We will talk about them in this article.
Victorian Christmas Cards by De La Rue
The artists of the English company De La Rue were especially distinguished, having managed to draw many completely unusual cards from 1875 to 1885. It seems that its editors chose cards based on the creativity of their artists, and it was truly limitless. How do you like a Christmas card with dinosaurs examining a drawing of an English gentleman in a top hat through a magnifying glass. Millions of years passed, people died out, and evolution turned around and created intelligent lizards? Not a cheerful prospect.
Paleontology
Or a postcard with some fairies or midgets putting on a circus show for fish in a river - what is the meaning of such a non-trivial plot?
Dance for fish
And the bullfinch, which is quite appropriate in winter, sits next to a bumblebee and a cockchafer with a double bass, as if it were a scene from some absurd cartoon.
Christmas card by artists of De La Rue company
However, all this had its explanations. The Christmas card market was oversaturated, there were too many of them, so it was necessary to somehow stand out from the monotonous images of incredibly cute kittens, children waiting for or accepting gifts, and red-cheeked Santa Clauses. So it was necessary to be original, often to the detriment of common sense and good taste. However, such cards are often even more interesting, and many residents of Victorian England grabbed everything they could find at Christmas sales, no different from today's buyers.
Prehistoric artist
In those years, thanks to the works of Charles Darwin, there was a serious interest in evolution, which postcard producers tried to play on.
Christmas card by artists of De La Rue company
Victorian morality was extremely strict, and the demand for nude drawings was consistently high. That's why artists had to get by by depicting such cute fairies - they don't measure up to the classical goddesses and naiads from "big" painting, but they won't raise any questions from the guardians of morality - after all, they are not real ladies, but fictional characters that can be depicted in any form.
Christmas cards at that time were widely available, cheap and served as photos and funny pictures from today's social networks. They were shared, given as gifts, exchanged, collected, and the ones they particularly liked were put in a wooden frame or hung on the wall. By the way, the classic Victorian interior was an incredibly colorful set of all kinds of cards, napkins, embroideries, figurines and wallpaper patterns that made your eyes water.
Delicious dish
Sometimes artists approached postcards with their own peculiar English humor and got such "masterpieces". And cute kittens were placed wherever possible, including on the mouthpiece.
Котята на мундштуке
And how about the torchlight procession of birds - you get the impression that it is obviously not good and looks quite ominous. But the Victorians had their own ideas about Christmas cards, and they didn't know about the rampages of the Ku Klux Klan.
Torchlight procession of birds
Victorian artists did not forget about the Eastern calendar, and therefore painted animals that personified a particular year, including pigs, but in their own Western style.
More gold!
It turns out that pigs do not produce manure, but gold coins, so the peasants who feed them can only be envied. However, a pig is always a pig, especially when it gets to drink alcohol.
Real pigs
Indeed, Victorian postcards are not inferior to modern ones, and in terms of fantasy will be more interesting.
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