Tags: Douglas Percy Bliss pencil watercolour children interiors night scenes and sleep women 1.Master Designs
Provenance: The Artist's Studio
Literature: Gargoyles & Tattie-Bogles: the lives and work of Douglas Percy Bliss and Phyllis Dodd, Fleece Press, 2018.
Having started his career as a successful wood engraver in the 1920's Bliss remained involved with book illustration as a means of supplementing the family income in the following decade. Having fallen out with Oliver Simon of the Curwen Press, which resulted in Bliss being removed from the list of contributors (circa 1930), he found commissions elsewhere during the following decade.. It is not know if Things that Go Bump in the Night was produced for a particular project - or just as an example of Bliss's remarkable ability to fuse humour with graphic lyricism. Usually associated with a traditional Scottish poem or prayer, the line 'Things that go bump in the Night' fits perfectly in spirit with the four volume publication that Bliss was shortly to embark on illustrating, The Devil in Scotland:(Maclehose, London, 1934), an anthology on witchcraft, diablerie & the supernatural in Scottish folklore & literature.
