EXTRACTS: Drawing from History: The Forgotten Art of Fortunino Matania © The Book Palace (340 PAGES in Full edition)

My initial exposure and introduction to the art of Fortunino Matania was on my first visit to Vern Corriel’s* home in the fall of 1963. Vern had several original Matanias framed and displayed on his walls. As I found out, they were all, with one exception, the black and white illustrations from the British Weekly magazine, The Passing Show , for the serializations of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pirates of Venus (published weekly from September 30 – November 25, 1933) and Lost on Venus (from December 2, 1933 – February 3, 1934). These were pen and ink or pencil with a wash overtone, and all were exquisite. Samples of these drawings are used to illustrate this article. When Henry Hardy Heins was approached by Dover publications in 1963 for artwork in their new edition of these two stories, he suggested Matania, and this was done, hastily, at the last minute, to make the deadline. The painting (above) is an astounding work. It is of a color oil painting on canvas, commissioned by Vern, and based on the following passage from Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars : I caught a glimpse of the prisoner from the battle craft who was being roughly dragged into a near-by building by a couple of green Martian females. And the sight which met my eyes was that of a slender, girlish figure, similar in every detail to the earthly women of my past life. She did not see me at first, but just as she was disappearing through the portal of the building which was to be her prison she turned, and her eyes met mine. Her face was beautiful in the extreme, her every feature was finely chiseled and exquisite. Her eyes large and lustrous and her head surmounted by a mass of coal black, waving hair, caught loosely into a strange yet becoming coiffure. Her skin was of a light reddish copper color, against which the crimson glow of her cheeks and the ruby of her beautifully molded lips shone with a strange enhancing effect. She was as destitute of clothes as the green Martians who accompanied her, indeed, save for her highly wrought ornaments she was entirely naked, nor could any apparel have enhanced the beauty of her perfect and symmetrical figure. This painting was originally to have been commissioned of J. Allen St. John. Vern had visited Mr. St. John’s home in the mid-1950s to discuss a “new and unique” painting for A Princess of Mars . The scene Vern wanted was the moment that John Carter first set eyes on Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium. Sadly Mr. St. John died without starting the painting. However, he managed to pencil some sketches which indicate that his idea was to depict Dejah Thoris in the clutches of the Martian women. She was the only complete figure in the sketches; the Martian women, to depict their size, were seen only by their arms and grasping hands coming in from the edges of the picture. It was two or three years later that Vern made contact with Fortunino Matania. He, along with Stan Vinson, purchased all of the illustrations for Burrough’s Venus stories that were still in Matania’s possession. At that time, Vern decided to commission Matania to execute the painting for A Princess of Mars . Matania agreed to do the oil (approximately 12 x 16 inches) for £90. He mailed the painting, rolled in a tube to Vern’s new home in Kansas City in the spring of 1962. Matania died on Friday, February 8, 1963. Extracted from Fortunino Matania, R.I. – The Last Victorian by Robert R. Barrett. (Reproduced by kind permission) Photo kindly supplied by Mr Barrett, for which we are extremely grateful.