Original watercolour: "List, ah list to the zephyr in the grove."

Notes

An original watercolour, signed and dated "Kay Nielsen 1913" in the lower left corner, for In Powder and Crinoline, a collection of seven fairy tales chosen by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. This watercolour illustrates the story "Felicia or The Pot of Pinks" and appears at p. 52: "Nielsen shows in his development a fancy so delicate and an outlook so original that no charge of plagiarism can be brought against him. His colour work is delicate and suggestive rather than forceful. Very lovely in its faint blues and greens with tones of peach is the illustration plate 21 i.e. this painting where the high folly, the love birds and the blossom testify to the legacy of Japan" (Keith Nicholson, Kay Nielsen, 1975).
Nielsen produced 26 watercolours in total for the book, which was published in 1913. An article in the 1913 Christmas Bookman recommending this work describes Nielsen as "a young artist of curiously original gifts. There are traces in his drawings for In Powder and Crinoline of the influence of Aubrey Beardsley, and there are also an imaginative daring, a fantasy, a fascinating grace and decorative loveliness that are peculiarly his own and make his art unique amongst the illustrations of this year's books".