Arthur Rackham

[rak-uhm]

Rackham, Arthur, 1867-1939, English illustrator and watercolorist. He is known for imaginative, delicately colored, and cheerful pen drawings, especially for children's books. Among these are Peter Pan (1906), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1907), and A Christmas Carol (1915).

See study by D. Hudson (1960, repr. 1974).

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Licensed from Columbia University Press

Arthur Rackham

(born Sept. 19, 1867, London, Eng.—died Sept. 6, 1939, Limpsfield, Surrey) British artist and illustrator. While a staff artist for a London newspaper, he also began illustrating books. He became skillful using the new halftone process, and his highly detailed drawings revealed a unique imagination. He achieved renown with a 1900 edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales, and his illustrations for Rip Van Winkle (1905) brought him recognition in America as well. Altogether he illustrated more than 60 books, including classics of children's literature as well as works by William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, John Milton, Richard Wagner, and Edgar Allan Poe.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

Arthur Rackham

Arthur Rackham (19 September 1867 – 6 September 1939) was a prolific English book illustrator.

Life

He was born in London as one of 12 children. At the age of 18, he worked as a clerk at the Westminster Fire Office and began studying at the Lambeth School of Art. In 1892 he quit his job and started working for The Westminster Budget as a reporter and illustrator. His first book illustrations were published in 1893 in The Dolly Dialogues, the collected sketches of Anthony Hope, who later went on to write The Prisoner of Zenda. Book illustrating then became Rackham's career for the rest of his life.

In 1903, he married Edyth Starkie, with whom he had one daughter, Barbara, in 1908. Rackham won a gold medal at the Milan International Exhibition in 1906 and another one at the Barcelona International Exposition in 1911. His works were included in numerous exhibitions, including one at the Louvre in Paris in 1914. Arthur Rackham died 1939 of cancer in his home in Limpsfield, Surrey.

Works

Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (1900)
Rip van Winkle (1905)
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (50 color plates, 1906)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (13 color plates, 1907)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (40 color plates, 1908)
Undine (15 color plates, 1909)
Der Ring des Nibelungen ("The Ring of the Nibelung")

The Rhinegold & The Valkyrie (34 color plates, 1910)
Siegfried & The Twilight of the Gods (32 color plates, 1911)

The Romance of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Alfred W. Pollard (23 color and monotone plates, 1917)
English Fairy Tales by Flora Annie Steel (1918)
The Springtide of Life by Algernon Charles Swinburne (8 color plates, 1918)
A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys (16 color plates, 1922)
The Tempest (20 color plates, 1926).

He also illustrated some short stories by Edgar Allan Poe.

Typically, Rackham contributed both colour and monotone illustrations towards the works incorporating his images - and in the case of Hawthorne's Wonder Book, he also provided a number of part-coloured block images similar in style to Meiji era Japanese woodblocks.

Gallery

Influence

In one of the featurettes on the DVD of Pan's Labyrinth,and in the commentary track for Hellboy, director Guillermo Del Toro , cites Rackham as an influence on the design of "The Faun" of Pan's Labyrinth. He liked the dark tone of Rackham's gritty realistic drawings and had decided to incorporate this into the film. In Hellboy, the design of the tree growing out of the altar in the ruined abbey off the coast of Scotland where Hellboy was brought over, is actually referred to as a "Rackham tree" by the director.