Early Lovecraft Illustrations

The earliest publications of H. P. Lovecraft were in amateur magazines like The Vagrant, so we have to wait until Weird Tales starts in 1923 to see any artwork associated with stories. The first of these was “Dagon”. All dates are for Weird Tales unless otherwise indicated.

There is a strange belief in my mind that all the Baird Weird Tales (up to May 1924) were badly illustrated or not illustrated at all. William Fred Heitman (1878-1945) should put this notion to bed. He was actually better than some who followed. The biggest problem seems to be the strange shapes of the images, which the text flowed around.

“Dagon” (October 1923)

“The Hound” (February 1924)

“The Rats in the Walls” ( March 1924)

“The White Ape” (April 1924)

“The Ghost-Eater” (with C. M. Eddy) (April 1924)

“Imprisoned With the Pharaohs” (with Harry Houdini) (May-June-July 1924)

“Hypnos” (May-June-July 1924)

With the change in editorship, now Farnsworth Wright who would hold the post until 1940, so a change in artists. Andrew Brosnatch was good at atmosphere but likes to contain his work inside rectangles. Only at the end, with “The Tomb”, does he break out of the box.

“The Festival” (January 1925)

“The Statement of Randolph Carter” (February 1925)

“Deaf, Dumb and Blind” (April 1925) (with C. M. Eddy)

“The Music of Erich Zann” (May 1925)

“The Temple” (September 1925)

“The Tomb” (January 1926)

Belle Goldschlager (1902-1988) (later Baranceanu) shows a wonderful talent for this classic story. Sadly, she did not do more illustration work for WT. Instead, she went onto be a famous painter and sculptor.

“The Outsider” (April 1926)

From the famous to the obscure, Ed Whitham also did a baker’s dozen of WT illos then disappeared.

“The Moon-Bog” (June 1926)

With “He”, George Ochterlony Olinick got his first of two Lovecraft illustrations. G. O. did many illustrations between 1926 and 1927 but only these two HPL ones.

“He” (September 1926)

“The Horror at Red Hook” (January 1927)

We have to leave Weird Tales for a moment and go over to Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories for “The Colour Out of Space”. It was illustrated not by Frank R. Paul but J. M. de Aragon. Most of the issue is done by Paul so it may be Gernsback wanted someone else to do the horror-themed image, or it may simply be coincidence. Either way, Frankie lost his only chance to do a Lovecraft picture. HPL would refuse to send anything else Gernsback’s way because of his poor payment practices. Lovecraft branded him “Hugo the Rat”.

“The Colour Out of Space” (Amazing Stories, September 1927)

It is fitting that we end with Hugh Rankin’s illo for “Pickman’s Model”. Hugh would go onto illustrate the majority of the rest of HPL’s major stories. His smoky pastel techniques work fairly well for the mysterious nature of the Cthulhu Mythos beings.

“Pickman’s Model” (October 1927)

What constitute “early” or “later” publication is a matter of choice. My line in the sand is the year 1928. In February of that year “The Call of Cthulhu” is published and I think we can consider everything after “later” or the best known of his works including “At the Mountains of Madness” and “The Dunwich Horror”.