Sidney Sime's How one came, as was foretold, to the City of Never is an illustration that was created for Lord Dunsay's The Book of Wonder published in 1912. The composition blends gothic and fantastical elements that capture turn of the cerntury British horror and the weird. The image shows rays of light streaming from the city that illuminates a man riding a winged creature, and reaveals eyes looming in the darkness. The penetrating beams of light highlight the tension between revealation and concealment, casting shadows that obsure as much as they illuminate. The rays of light aslo look similar to popular dipictions of x-rays. In reference to Sime's illustrations in The Book of Wonder, Atmzon metions how Sime was "likely to have internalized widely accepted ideas about the 'form' of x-rays and engaged them for affective purpose." (8) This element emphasizes the potency of concentrated light, reinforcing its ability to expose, terrify, and annihilate a single, chilling act.
Works Cited
Atmzon, Leslie. "Visual Rhetoric and Special Eloquence of Visual Form." DRS Digital Library, 2006, https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2006/researchpapers/3/
Sime, Sidney. "How One Came, as Was Foretold, to the City of Never" The Victorian Web, 2008, https://victorianweb.org/art/illustration/sime/8.html