Hans Henning Otto Harry Baron von Voigt (20 October 1887 – 30 October 1969), best known by his nicknameAlastair, was a German artist, composer, dancer, mime, poet, singer and translator.[1]
Hans Henning Baron von Voight was born of German nobility inKarlsruhe.[2]: 5 In his youth he joined a circus and learned mime.[2] Shortly after leaving school he studied philosophy atMarburg University where he met the writerBoris Pasternak.[2] He was self-taught as an artist, and he was also a proficient dancer and pianist.[3]
For a time he lived at Versailles, and from there carried on an extensive correspondence with his sometime lover Richard Thoma, including alluding to his other liaisons: "I only rushed away for a couple of hours to meet somebody at midnight under the blue elm. My happenings are sad to say often in this bad taste."[4]
He died inMunich in 1969.
He is best known as an illustrator, under thepen name "Alastair". His career as an artist was begun in 1914, whenJohn Lane publishedForty-Three Drawings by Alastair.[3]
His drawings, which are often decadent in spirit and have the look ofArt Nouveau, are influenced somewhat by the drawings of the English artistAubrey Beardsley, who illustrated works byOscar Wilde, as Alastair would later do. His ‘serpentine line’ often depicts characters whose outlines are lightly drawn with the main areas filled in with ‘broken dotted lines’.[2]: 6 His drawings were in black and white ink, sometimes with one colour added. Alastair's illustrations show a strong influence from theDecadent movement in art and poetry that had begun decades earlier, with the "perverse and sinister"[3] a recurring theme. Intricate decorative elements and fine detail are apparent in his works.
Alastair’s fame spread in 1920 with the publication of Wilde'sThe Sphinx, which contained ten full-page illustrations by him, ‘printed in black and turquoise’.[5][2]: 12 Many of his drawings were inspired by the poems of Wilde, and in 1922 Alastair would illustrate a book of Wilde’s playSalome.[2]: 13
Other books containing Alastair's illustrations include:
InThe Blind Bow-Boy Alastair depicted the ‘androgynous male’.
Alastair had at least two public exhibitions of his works during his lifetime, at the Leicester Galleries in 1914 and at theWeyhe Gallery in New York in 1925.[3]
During the 1930s, he stopped drawing, only to resume in 1964.[2]: pp. 24–29
