The emperor’s different clothes 3. By Erik Dal

Bertall. Contes. France 1856

One of the most universal is ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, written in 1837 and modelled on a medieval Spanish tale which Andersen read in anew German translation. The popularity is understandable. The tale is very amusing, its point has long since become a common quotation; and who would not identify himself with something as likeable as a small child, and with the title of a fairy tale dismiss incomprehensible problems as if they were non-existent. That expedient at any rate is one of the reasons for the marked use of this title in Andersen’s homeland.

The first Andersen illustrations in book form were German; our tale was included, G: Osterwald etching the minister and the weavers in an interior that was old-fashioned in relation to the book’s date, 1839. The emperor in procession, however, we see in the drawing of the classic Danish illustrator Vilhelm Pedersen ten years later. The style character here is Renaissance. Some fifty years later, another Dane, Hans Tegner, drew the procession in a townscape of real Copenhagen houses of the period after the fire of 1729, giving the spectators features of early-nineteenth-century costumes.

From Hans Christian Andersen – Danish Journal 1976

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