Sidney Sime

A postscript to my blogging upon the art of nightmares and sleep paralysis - this subtle incubus is a creature of pure formless darkness:

Sidney Sime: The Incubus (1899)

Sidney Sime is one of my absolute favourite artists at the moment. He worked mostly in black-and-white, for magazines and for illustrations to the fantasy tales of Lord Dunsany (coincidentally one of my favourite authors!).

The City of Never

I find his visions incredibly evocative and thrilling and creepy ... however sadly for this blog it must be admitted they are largely lacking in sexuality, except when he's deliberately copying Beardsley's style. I've fished around for the few exceptions...

This is the centaur Shepperalk indulging in some typically centaurish behaviour:

He galloped with half-shut eyes up the temple-steps, and, only seeing dimly through his lashes, seized Sombelenë by the hair, undazzled as yet by her beauty, and so haled her away; and, leaping with her over the floorless chasm where the waters of the lake fall unremembered away into a hole in the world, took her we know not where, to be her slave for all centuries that are allowed to his race.

The Bride of the Man-Horse

 The goddess Inzana (the Dawn) calls up the Thunder:

A Legend of the Dawn

I've no idea what this one is about, but it's dated 1904:

And this beauty is possibly Sime's masterpiece:

Romance Comes Down out of Hilly Woodlands

If you want to see more Sime, you might start with Monsterbrains :-)