Francis Rothbart!: The Tale of a Fastidious Feral FIRST EDITION

Woodruff, Thomas

ISBN 10: 168396649X / ISBN 13: 9781683966494

Published by Fantagraphics Books Inc, Seattle, 2022

About this Item

First Edition. Hardcover. 14 1/4" X 10 1/2". 292pp. Stated First Printing. Bound in color pictorial paper over boards. Very mild shelf wear to covers, corners, and edges of binding, with bumping to bottom edge of rear cover. Pages are clean and unmarked. Binding is firm and sound. A very presentable first edition of this graphic opera from the acclaimed painter and illustrator Thomas Woodruff. This book is heavy and oversized and will require additional postal charges to ship internationally. Please contact us today for an international shipping quote. ABOUT THIS BOOK: A stunning, head-turning, "graphic opera" masterpiece from an acclaimed painter and illustrator. Francis Rothbart! follows a feral child who is raised by magpies and other creatures and is repeatedly struck by lightning. Because of the phenomena, the child develops eccentric talents, which he then abuses, leading to his ultimate destruction by the same natural world that once nurtured him. Written mostly in rhymed verse, Francis's picaresque saga unfolds in an allegorical environment, much like the topographical constructions behind renaissance religious paintings. Referencing both the Venetian landscapes of Bellini, Pierro di Cosimo and Carpaccio, mixed with the unlikely animated backdrops of Jay Ward and Chuck Jones, Woodruff's images recall the fictive gardens of a paradise lost that lingers somewhere deep in all our souls, moist and dark like the caves of the pious saints. Combining both paintings and drawings, each scene is a visual and verbal feast that transports us to a place in which trees anthropomorphize into figures bending from the weight of stalactite crowns, an iris becomes the gown for an oneiric sprite, and the sky rains down tears, as if mimicking the melancholy of a weeping willow. In a muted palette, Woodruff's carbon and white charcoal pencil drawings bring us ever closer to this mythical ecology. The artist lovingly focuses on every detail: ethereal, fragile blossoms, petals, roots, and leaves; impressively observed wildlife creatures; and each curve of the hand lettered text is rendered by the delicate hand of an illustrative obsessionist with a penchant for the poignant. Woodruff's images are multi-sourced amalgamations that echo with familiarity, portraying a world that is not only our own but also exists in the place of our half-remembered dreams. Thomas Woodruff's first graphic novel is a self-described "graphic opera" unlike anything ever created, a tour de force of words and images in harmony that will be one of the most talked-about books of the decade.(Publisher).

Seller Inventory # 12417

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Francis Rothbart!: The Tale of a Fastidious Feral FIRST EDITION
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books Inc, Seattle
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 168396649X
• ISBN 13: 9781683966494
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Very good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literature
  • Illustrated Books

About this title

Synopsis

Francis Rothbart! follows a feral child who is raised by magpies and other creatures and is repeatedly struck by lightning. Because of the phenomena, the child develops eccentric talents, which he then abuses―leading to his ultimate destruction by the same natural world that once nurtured him.

Written mostly in rhymed verse, Francis’s picaresque saga unfolds in an allegorical environment, much like the topographical constructions behind renaissance religious paintings. Referencing both the Venetian landscapes of Bellini, Pierro di Cosimo and Carpaccio, mixed with the unlikely animated backdrops of Jay Ward and Chuck Jones, Woodruff’s images recall the fictive gardens of a paradise lost that lingers somewhere deep in all our souls, moist and dark like the caves of the pious saints.

Combining both paintings and drawings, each scene is a visual and verbal feast that transports us to a place in which trees anthropomorphize into figures bending from the weight of stalactite crowns, an iris becomes the gown for an oneiric sprite, and the sky rains down tears, as if mimicking the melancholy of a weeping willow. In a muted palette, Woodruff’s carbon and white charcoal pencil drawings bring us ever closer to this mythical ecology. The artist lovingly focuses on every detail: ethereal, fragile blossoms, petals, roots, and leaves; impressively observed wildlife creatures; and each curve of the hand lettered text is rendered by the delicate hand of an illustrative obsessionist with a penchant for the poignant. Woodruff’s images are multi-sourced amalgamations that echo with familiarity, portraying a world that is not only our own but also exists in the place of our half-remembered dreams.

Thomas Woodruff’s first graphic novel is a self-described “graphic opera” unlike anything ever created, a tour de force of words and images in harmony that will be one of the most talked-about books of the decade.

About the Author

Thomas Woodruff’s works have been included in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally including the Whitney Museum of Art (NY), The Norman Rockwell Museum (MA), the Kohler Arts Center (WI), and the National Gallery of Australia. His work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum (NY), MIT List Center (MA), The New School (NY), the Honolulu Museum of Art (HI), the New Orleans Museum of Art (LA), the Greenville County Museum (SC), and the Art Gallery of Western Australia. He lives in upstate New York and recently retired as the Chairman of the Illustration and Cartooning Departments at the School of Visual Arts in New York where he held the post for 20 years.