An exhibition on now at the Peabody Essex Museum, in Salem, Massachusetts, confidently asserts that Moby-Dick is the “most persistently pictured of all American novels.” A surely unverifiable claim, though it makes intuitive sense: if you were an illustrator, wouldn’t you want to draw or paint or engrave images of a giant white whale arcing above the waves while little men on little boats brace to be smashed to smithereens—as opposed to, say, four sisters bringing their Christmas supper to a poor family, or a boy and a man drifting down a lazy river on a raft?
Maybe I’ve stacked the deck a bit, but “Draw Me Ishmael: The Book Arts of Moby Dick” makes its case with verve, wit, and more than four dozen different editions of Herman Melville’s 1851 masterwork, Moby-Dick; or The Whale, ranging from the first American edition to volumes illustrated by several generations of well- and lesser-known artists and illustrators; I was surprised to find Alex Katz and LeRoy Neiman among the ranks.
