Arthur Rackham

A dear and most constant companion from my childhood and influence of my artist style is Arthur Rackham, (19 September 1867 – 6 September 1939) an English illustrator who is responsible for some of the most iconic children’s book illustrations such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the Brothers Grimm Fairy tales.

At this the whole pack rose in the air, and came flying down upon her | Arthur Rackham | 1907 | from Alice in Wonderland

The dark tone of his often grotesque work coupled with the emotions, charm and realism illustrates many of lives truths that morals of fairy tales often do convey. When viewing the illustrations as an adult I find them much more sinister than I did as a child and that is what I wish to portray when producing my own art work.

The characters seem all too real even as mythical symbols they still leap from the page and into our minds becoming real life imitations of unscrupulous people we meet in the world.

Whist reading about Rackham I recently came across a humours fact that his nephew Walter Starkie is reported to have described his uncle by commenting:

“His face was wizened and wrinkled like a ripe walnut, and as he peered short sightedly at me out of his goggle spectacles I thought he was one of the goblins out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.”1

I feel this statement is very quaint as I imagine this man who has fired millions of children’s imaginations working away and slowly beginning to imitate his lifelong work or was it the other way around! Either way Arthur Rackham is still celebrated today for his amazing work still poignant and still very relevant to me.

1 Walter Starkie to Derek Hudson, c.1959, quoted Hudson, P. 50