Decorative Landscape

By 1925 the man who painted this was better known for his books than his brushes, and it shows in the picture. This is a landscape treated as decoration. Hills, trees and sky are flattened into firm outline and ornament, worked in tempera and ink on a small sheet of paper. He had spent years designing and illustrating volumes in the Bulgarian Symbolist manner, thick with Byzantine and medieval pattern, and he brings that designer's eye outdoors, arranging the view much as he would lay out a printed page. There is no passing effect of light or weather here. Every shape is fixed and stylised, set down on a sheet not much larger than an open book.