Illustrator John R. Neill is never mentioned in the first rank of Nouveau illustrators. This seems a shame.
While his amazing illustrations for L. Frank Baum’s Oz books surely owe as much to Charles Dana Gibson and Joseph Clement Coll as to Alphonse Mucha, they were my first brushes with Art Nouveau and still hold the power to amaze.
I have since traveled to the Czech Republic to see Mucha’s Slav Epic and his window at St. Vitus Cathedral, and studied the work of so many other brilliant practitioners - photographer Karl Blossfeldt, glass makers Lalique and Tiffany, architects Antonio Gaudi, Victor Horta, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and naturalist Ernst Haeckel. I strive to carry their inspiration with me in all my work.
