The Victorian Low Brow Art of Madame Talbot

Absinthe
Originally uploaded by Victorian Lowbrow

Low Brow was a term applied to underground art and comics that arose in the '70's in California. Madame Talbot takes the genre back further into the Victorian Era. Her work has a certain morbidity that is tongue and cheek and certainly a Bohemian flair. Working without any computer aid, she draws, inks and prints her work on an offset press keeping a uniqueness about her art.


Often her work deals with the ritual of death, frolicking skeletons, hearses and hand carved tombstones fill her repertory of macabre images. These pieces are most always embellished with elaborate border work and one would think if he were ambling down a gas lit alley in Victorian London one of her many posters would seem fitting to be adorning the brick walls.

Riding Home Victorian Funeral
Originally uploaded by Victorian Lowbrow

Madame Talbot's love for the macabre atmosphere of the Victorian age also takes form in her other creations as well. Framed medical instruments, shrunken heads and apothecary bottles are loving displayed with calligraphy and art. Always disturbing but retaining a Charles Addams sense of twisted humor, her creations are definitely well sought after even by authors like Neil Gaiman. If you would like to see a collection of her framed curios click here.

Real Human Brain Slice
Originally uploaded by Victorian Lowbrow

She also has a series of death head dolls and mourning dolls that she has sewn by hand. Madame Talbot is a purist in the regard of keeping her work a craft and not a product of the Digital Age but more in keeping with the Victorian Era. Yet this sense of aestheticism lends a certain weight and definite charm to her work.

Mourning Dolls
Originally uploaded by Victorian Lowbrow