Lot Essay
In 1924, Nielsen returned to London after spending the postwar years in his native town of Copenhagen. It was in this year that Hodder & Stoughton published his edition of Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Anderson. The presence of the curvilinear floral motifs in the green border of The Moonlight Procession resemble those that border every colour illustration in this book.
"The Tinder Box", the first illustration and frontispiece of Fairy Tales, portrays the sleeping Princess being carried by the round-eyed dog to the soldier. In The Moonlight Procession, the graduated hues of the sky with full moon together with the dog sitting with the lady in the Sedan chair being escorted through the cobbled streets of the town are similarities in subject matter that also appear in the frontispiece. This reinforces the suggestion that this illustration could be an unpublished version for the The Tinder Box possibly depicting the wedding day of the Princess and Soldier.
"The Tinder Box", the first illustration and frontispiece of Fairy Tales, portrays the sleeping Princess being carried by the round-eyed dog to the soldier. In The Moonlight Procession, the graduated hues of the sky with full moon together with the dog sitting with the lady in the Sedan chair being escorted through the cobbled streets of the town are similarities in subject matter that also appear in the frontispiece. This reinforces the suggestion that this illustration could be an unpublished version for the The Tinder Box possibly depicting the wedding day of the Princess and Soldier.