Second day Northwest at Jennie Richee are captured by general Federals glan-delinian near Aronburg Run River (verso), [ ] Battle of [ ]ster [] D. (recto)

Henry Darger is one of the foremost outsider artists to have worked in Chicago, known for his beautiful, yet disturbing watercolor drawings. At the heart of his work is the massive tale of over 15,000 pages, The Story of the Vivian Girls, in what is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. The story follows the misadventures of his seven heroines—the Vivian sisters, aged five to eight, pictured here—as they fight countless battles in a war of good against evil—the Catholic nation of Abbiennia against the forces of the sadistic, child-enslaving Glandelinians. Begun around 1910, In the Realms of the Unreal took Darger over 20 years to complete and provided the foundation for his art for the rest of his life. Through tracing, carbon copying, and collage, Darger appropriated material from children’s books, comics, newspapers, and magazines to create the mural-sized collages and drawings that illustrated the fantastical scenes of his saga. He added personal effects that divorced the figures from their original contexts: little girls gained penises or were given bird or butterfly wings and ram horns to form “Blengiglomeanean Spirits,” creatures who aided the Vivian girls in battle.

Resource: Smart Collecting: Acquisitions 1990-2004, Kimberly Rorschach, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. 64-5.