EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 20 © 2017 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

70 Ivan Bilibin An artist whose private passions mirrored the turbulence of the world around him. Peter Richardson tells of the highs and lows of one of the greatest Russian illustrators ever . The life of the Russian illustrator Ivan Bilibin, was every bit as tempestuous as the events that swept through Europe in the early years of the last century. The seismic upheavals that beset his Mother Russia were mirrored in his own life, which seemed governed by his compulsive womanising, drinking and erratic temperament. If ever a man’s heart ruled his head, Ivan Bilibin was the very embodiment of that principle. His impulsive personality was to lead to three marriages, numerous affairs and infatuations, a lifetime’s battle with alcoholism and ultimately to his decline and death during the German siege of Leningrad in 1942. Born on August 4, 1876, in Tarkhova, a suburb of Saint Petersburg, Ivan