Illustrating a classic: Smith professor’s artworks featured in an exhibition honoring the centennial of Herman Melville’s ‘Billy Budd’

“Billy in the Darbies,” graphite drawing by Barry Moser, 2024.

“Billy in the Darbies,” graphite drawing by Barry Moser, 2024. COURTESY THE GROLIER CLUB/Photo by Nicole Neenan

“Billy Budd, Sailor,” graphite drawing by Barry Moser, 2023.

“Billy Budd, Sailor,” graphite drawing by Barry Moser, 2023. COURTESY THE GROLIER CLUB/Photo by Janna Tew​​

“The Death of John Claggart, Master-at-Arms,” woodcut by Barry Moser, 2023.

“The Death of John Claggart, Master-at-Arms,” woodcut by Barry Moser, 2023. ​​​​​​COURTESY THE GROLIER CLUB/Photo by Nicole Neenan

By CAROLYN BROWN

Staff Writer

Published: 10-09-2024 3:11 PM

Barry Moser, an illustrator and professor of art at Smith College, has works featured in a New York City exhibition honoring the centennial of Herman Melville’s novel “Billy Budd.”

Moser’s work will be shown as part of the “Melville’s Billy Budd at 100” exhibit at The Grolier Club, “America’s oldest & largest society for bibliophiles and enthusiasts in the graphic arts,” through Saturday, Nov. 9, at 47 E. 60th St.

“Billy Budd,” written by Herman Melville, the American novelist most famous for “Moby Dick,” is about a young sailor who is sentenced to death for being falsely accused of mutiny and attacking his accuser. Melville died, however, before finishing it; it wasn’t published until 1924, 33 years after his death. Melville, incidentally, lived in western Massachusetts for much of his life; his former home, Arrowhead, located in Pittsfield, is now a tourist attraction maintained by the Berkshire County Historical Society.

The Melville Electronic Library hosts a digital copy of the book with annotations that indicate Melville’s revisions to the work and inconsistencies between manuscript versions; one of the biggest is the name of the ship on which the novel takes place, which Melville calls the “Indomitable” at times and the “Bellipotent” at others. Moser said that in making his illustrations, he approached the text as a finished work nonetheless.

The exhibition features more than 50 items that relate to “Billy Budd,” including transcriptions of the novel’s manuscript, movie posters, and the libretto for the Benjamin Britten opera based on the novel, among others, all of which come from the collection of William Palmer Johnston, a Grolier Club member.

Moser is no stranger to illustrating classic literature; he’s also illustrated “Frankenstein,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Wizard of Oz,” and “Dracula,” among others. He jokes that he likes illustrating classics because “I don’t have to pay anybody royalties.”

Even so, he admits he isn’t a fan of Melville’s prose, which he finds challenging to parse without reading it a few times. Still, when he read “Moby Dick” a few years ago, he was impressed by the author’s “extraordinary gift as a storyteller” and found the book’s structure “genius.”

To make his illustrations, Moser recruited a few people he knew to serve as models, including Matt Donovan, director of the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith, who portrays the villain, John Claggart; and his own grandson, whom Moser dressed up in costumes to portray Billy.

Article continues after...

Yesterday's Most Read Articles

Northampton fire crews contain brush fire in Fitzgerald Lake Conservation Area, work to put out blaze that swept through 52 acres
Easthampton woman pleads guilty to fatal stabbing of ex-boyfriend, sentenced to 16-19 years for manslaughter
Around the Hamptons: Easthampton family seeks help after car crashes into home
Chance Encounters with Bob Flaherty: A heartful of sound: Band Day with the ‘power and class of New England’
Northampton gateway properties near I-91, primed for development, bought as group
UMass basketball: New-look Minutemen eye opener with UNH to kick off final Atlantic 10 season

“I built the book around him. I costumed him, and made a lot of photographs of that boy to the point where he couldn’t smile anymore,” Moser joked.

Moser also worked himself into the illustrations as the chaplain, a character who comforts Billy, because “I thought that would be a nice relationship between grandfather and grandson.”

The “Billy Budd at 100” exhibit is free, and much of its content is also viewable virtually on Omeka, a digital platform for scholarly exhibitions, museums, libraries, and the like. After the exhibition ends its run in New York, it will travel to Oberlin College Conservatory Libraries in Ohio from Sunday, Nov. 17, through Friday, Dec. 20.

Carolyn Brown can be reached at cbrown@gazettenet.com.