Welcome to Sherlock Holmes: A Study in illustrations Volume lll, and now we finally enter the world of Sherlock Holmes in glorious colour, gone are the monochrome illustrations of Sidney Paget, Richard Gutschmidt and others, it is now, finally time for a splash of colour and in particular the work of our featured Artist Frederic Dorr Steele, and while it is true, given his importance in the Sherlock Holmes Illustration world and particularly America, that perhaps he should have appeared in an earlier volume, it is only in a colour volume, that his talents really shine with his wonderfully coloured Collier Covers (not an easy thing to say) and so his work has had to wait until now. The mention of Steele also links us nicely in with the Actor William Gillette, so we have a section about this man, who personified Sherlock Holmes for a generation and inspired the likeness Steele used in his illustration.

So what is in this book, well we have a very cosmopolitan collections from artist from France, Ireland, America, Spain, & Britain, starting with Beeton’s Christmas Annual of 1887, the publication which first introduced the World to Holmes or is that Holmes to the World? This is our first cover image as befits it’s importance, then we have a rather pleasing front cover by French artist, Andre Galland, who sadly only ever did one illustration of Holmes. More covers follow from another French artist, namely Gaston Simoes da Fonseca, sorry we will have to split Fonseca’s work over two volumes, because he only did 3 colour (shown here) and 128 monochrome images so he will be the featured artist in the next volume, think of his three colour images, here as an introduction to his main body of work.

There is a short introduction to the English Artist Pamela Colman Smith and the Irish Illustrator Albert George Morrow before we come to the William Gillette section, with posters for his play and film and also a programme. This leads us onto Frederic Dorr Steele’s Holmes and his Avatar of Gillette, as he appeared in print, over 200 pages as we explore the entire Steele collection.

In addition to appearing in books and magazines, Holmes also appeared on Cards, and we have the complete collection of 25 Turf cigarette cards produced by Alexander Boguslavsky in 1923, strictly speaking these are not a Holmes collection, but a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle character one. Next we have a 1920s Joanquin Coll Salieti series of 40 cards that illustrated 3 Sherlock Holmes stories, Spanish text with an English translation. To round out the card section, we have a non-card, a beer mat, for the what was once a Whitbread Sherlock Holmes pub, but is now owned by Greene King. In 1933 Player’s produced 25 characters from fiction cigarette cards set. We only include card number 21, Sherlock Holmes. Nearing the end of this volume we have 4 images by Wladyslaw Teodor (WT) Brenda. Last but not least we have a nice little puzzle by John French Sloan and a mystery about who originated a view of Sherlock Crossed legs, smoking a pipe. Take a look inside and you decide.