ARTHUR IGNATIUS KELLER

NEW YORK TIMES- MARCH 7, 1915
REVIEW: THE VALLEY OF FEAR
by A. Conan Doyle; Illustrated by A.I. Keller

"...Excellent as are Mr. Keller's gifts as an illustrator, the present pictures are a failure in characterization. Holmes has come to have as real a physical presentment to his public as though he were personally familiar to it. He simply does not exist in these illustrations."

SHERLOCK HOLMES IN PORTRAIT AND PROFILE
BY WALTER KLINEFELTER

"In America, The Valley of Fear was first presented to the public through the pages of The Sunday Magazine, in serial form. It appeared in ten installments, printed in the numbers published from September 22 to November 20, 1914, and was embellished with eleven illustrations executed by Arthur I. Keller, one of the better known magazine artists of the day.

Five of his drawings mirror his mental image of Sherlock. There may be just a suggestion of the Steele influence in his portraits, but certainly not enough to make them distinctive. Keller was short on interpretative qualities and achieved his effects mainly by delineating his chief subject in exaggerated postures and extremes of sartorial splendor. For all his love of dramatic situations, and The Valley of Fear has many of them, Holmes never was quite the poseur that Keller depicts.

The text of The Valley of Fear, when produced in book form in America by the George H. Doran Company, was accompanied by seven of Keller's magazine drawings, reproduced on greatly reduced scale." (See these seven illustration above.)