Arthur Rackham: A List of Books Illustrated by Him

by Frederick Coykendall

Arthur Rackham

Arthur Rackham

 

Arthur Rackham

A List of Books Illustrated by Him

Compiled by

Frederick Coykendall

with

An Introductory Note

by

Martin Birnbaum

 

Privately Printed

1922

Note: The illustrations on pages 1 and 15 are reproduced from original drawings by Arthur Rackham. The one on page 15 has not been previously published.

 

COPYRIGHT 1922 BY FREDERICK COYKENDALL

Arthur Rackham

A Note of Appreciation

Arthur Rackham is a genial Englishman without eccentricities or idiosyncracies, who lives a serene uneventful life with his wife—who is also a gifted artist—and their daughter, in a studio appropriately situated near Primrose Hill in his native London. In this peaceful spot, far from the more exciting bohemian atmosphere of Chelsea, fragrant with the sweet odours of lilac and laburnum, and at Houghton, Arundel, his country home, he works patiently, like one of those quaint, keen-eyed, good-natured gnomes he loves to draw and which he in many ways resembles. It is easy for a visitor to discover the gentle humour and the even gentler pathos of Charles Lamb behind Rackham’s large tortoise-shell spectacles, but it is difficult to believe that the imagination of this unaffected magician has furnished the raw material for his exceptionally engaging art.

Even Punch takes Rackham seriously, and he has been delighting young and old for so many years that in 1922 an admirer can merely follow, with docility, the trails of praise which earlier writers have blazed. His excellences have become byewords, but there are no amusing myths or romantic legends connected with his life to excite the attention of the curious. He was educated at the City of London School, and like every child in a well ordered English household, he soon became familiar with Punch and the Graphic. He has never ceased to hold the best early illustrators on the staffs of those papers in high esteem, and the most memorable step in his artistic development was the discovery for himself of the genius of one of their number, that great lover of children, the neglected one-eyed master, Arthur Boyd Houghton, who is also one of John Singer Sargent’s enthusiasms. Dalziel’s edition of the Arabian Nights,—for which Houghton made some of his striking drawings on wood,—became the boy’s treasure-trove, and among Rackham’s valued possessions to this day, are two original drawings by Houghton, fortunately drawn on paper and never destroyed by the wood engravers. Young Rackham’s secret ambition was to become such an artist, and although his father, Marshal to the English Admiralty, started him on a business career in an insurance office, he never ceased to draw. His sedentary labours as a statistician were not very exacting, and dissatisfied with his achievements as an amateur draughtsman, he became a student in the night classes of the Lambeth School of Art, where Sir William Llewellyn, R. A., was then chief master. F. A. Townsend, afterwards the editor of Punch, Raven Hill, the founder of The Butterfly, Sturge Moore, poet and wood-engraver, and the inseparable Shannon and Ricketts, were among his more famous fellow students. As often happens in art schools, the teachings of the master are not as potent or effective as the association of gifted classmates and Rackham feels particularly indebted to Charles Ricketts, who even in those early days was a dominating and inspiring influence, distinguished for his rare taste. The young men discussed all the latest artistic movements which originated in France, and their Saturday afternoons and holidays were spent on Wimbledon Common, drawing from nature. It is impossible to tell when Rackham’s power of draughtsmanship and the individuality of his method and vision first declared themselves, but he soon became known as an artist with a special bent for fantastic subjects, and when he fell in with journalists like the editors of the Pall Mall Budget, he was sent on free-lance errands to execute occasional drawings and sketches at theatres. His great opportunity came when he was commissioned to illustrate Grimm’s Fairy Tales, in 1900. Thereafter his life is a record of popular and artistic successes. Twenty years have passed since he sent some water colour drawings to the exhibition of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colour, and on the strength of their merits he was immediately elected an Associate, although his original art was not in accord with the academic traditions of the English masters. In 1912 he was made an Associate of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts, when a large collection of his works filled a special room of their Salon. He has been frequently honoured with official seals of approval in the shape of medals, and his water colour drawings are exhibited in the art galleries of Paris, Vienna, Barcelona, London and in many English Municipal and Colonial public collections.

Rackham’s industry, as revealed by Mr. Frederick Coykendall’s list,—which does not include occasional drawings,—has been quite stupendous, and it is extraordinary that his spontaneity, fancy and sense of beauty have never become stale. Not only does he always enter completely into the spirit of an author, but his whimsical imagination is always introducing happy original details into his interpretations and adding marginal improvisations. No better examples of sympathetic collaboration by artist and author need be mentioned than Rackham’s drawings for Barrie’s delicious works, or for Washington Irving’s immortal Rip Van Winkle. It is also pleasant to find that even after he is regarded as a master of his particular genre, Rackham remains a modest, conscientious student, and there are quantities of sketch books filled with studies from nature for all his finished works. Numberless drawings of exquisite hands, dancing feet, gossamer rainbow-coloured wings, twinkling eyes and twisted wrinkled noses, gnarled roots and branches, buds and blossoms, rocks and clouds,—often executed with the meticulous precision of a German engraver,—fill his notebooks and explain the delicacy and facility of his hand. His fertility is merely another proof that good old fashioned academic tutelage is the secret of mastery, for nothing else could account for the splendid competency of Rackham’s remarkable output. His advancing years have indeed witnessed an improvement in his art, and the latest drawings for Milton’s Comus are among his most attractive and dreamlike. Furthermore, he has recently begun to forsake the printed page for oil and canvas, and his Undine and the Coming of Spring are surprising first achievements in a new medium. Being primarily a graphic artist, and not a water colourist like Brabazon or Dodge Macknight, his colour hitherto merely enhanced the beauty of his drawings, and his development as a painter in oils will therefore be followed with special interest. We may even hope that he will not always be forced to exercise his incomparable fancy in an effort to bring an author’s word painting before the vision of a reader.

Rackham’s early published works, like the rather hesitating drawings for Gulliver and the Ingoldsby Legends, were just as fresh and original in spirit as the powerful designs for The Ring of the Nibelung and the complete list of his œuvre is a consistent protest against the exploitation of sterile realism. He peoples his green woodlands and meadows with spritely dapper elves, fairies who dance with daintiest grace and blithe spirits who protect with supernatural kindness the unapproachable golden haired Rackham children—types which have taken their place beside the sweet creations of Kate Greenaway, the spirited young people of Caldecott, and the little Orientals of Houghton himself. Indeed, this uncommonly persuasive invention of a new type of child is Mr. Frederick Wedmore’s explanation of Rackham’s universal popularity. As we turn the pages of these fascinating books and come upon such adorable young people as those who encircle the singing poet Swinburne, the sleeping baby in “Almost fairy time” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), the three wistful daughters of Hesperus who adorn the frontispiece to Comus, or the popular heroes and heroines of Barrie’s Peter Pan,—we come to the conclusion that the human heart can yearn for nothing more lovable, and even a Perugino bambino is not more free from every element of guile than these boys and girls of Arthur Rackham. Their innocent gestures, rendered with unusual tenderness, and their happy festivities amid scenes of pastoral loveliness, the riotous play of Puck and his impish friends, the dances of radiant beings without substance, moonlight rides on thistle-down, the court of Oberon and Titania, and the good-natured folk who live in the depths of the sea,—these form the favourite materials of our unmalicious wizard’s fancy. His architectural inventions are perhaps not as surprising as the amazing castles of our own Maxfield Parrish, but his ivy covered turrets and red brick walls mellowed by time, have a special charm. Rackham is happier, however, when he forsakes ordinary human habitations, for the paradise of children or magical realms not meant for mortal feet to tread. He seems to possess the mythopoeic sense of the artists of ancient Hellas, personifying natural forces and creating landscapes which stir our sense of hidden mysteries and suggest weird thoughts. Small wonder that Marcelle Tinayre and a host of other French admirers call him ‘le peintre-sorcier.’ Damp mists brood low upon his hills and veil his gardens of enchantment, which are lit by the scattered light of glow worms. His personified trees, to which a special word should be given, grow on the borderland of dreams in strange hoary forests fit for ghostly rituals, where the owl hoots, the wind whistles, and lost souls or other shadowy visitants flit about. The gnarled trunks, tortured and twisted, have a thousand emergent eyes frowning down upon you. The labyrinths of their forked branches are the habitations of bats and disfigured beasts, and they stretch their long-reaching arms amidst the decaying foliage in every direction, like troubling hallucinations. Mysterious mountain fastnesses where fearless knights seek adventures, dark defiles where dragons love to hide, spirits armed with a disquieting beauty, wrinkled old crones and many-headed ogres, wizened dwarfs and forbidding spectres with curious shifty eyes, grottoes where the Norns weave, and all the phantasmata of the little Dutch masters, constitute the sombre side of his subject matter. Had some of these shown a morbid, diabolical or sensual element, they would have been acceptable to Huysmans. Rackham’s art, however, is always conditioned by a moral quality of mind, and a breezy healthfulness of feeling. Even his most fearsome grotesques and terrifying nightmares are invested with a certain delicacy and touched with an ethereal beauty. No matter in what strange realm we may find ourselves, he is always credible because truth underlies his invention and gives it the indispensable note of actuality, and no other artist could have converted a familiar park like Kensington Gardens into such a vividly real fairy-land as Peter Pan’s playground. When he exercises his alchemy upon such winning material, or on the joys of the apple harvest, the pranks of Robin Goodfellow, the festivals of Spring and above all upon the legends which are told over a glass of nut-brown ale around a blazing Christmas log, Rackham’s art, mingled with his wholesome English humour, becomes irresistible.

The old charge that his palette was too subdued was at one time quite fair, but it should be remembered that the salient characteristic of Rackham’s art is its Gothic spirit. Had he lived five centuries earlier, he would have been animating the borders of parchment missals, with demons, mythical unicorns, necromancers and floral forms, or carving gargoyles, intricate traceries and lace-like arabesques in stone and wood like those to be seen at Albi or St. Bertrand de Comminges. There is a peculiar fitness and charm about his tender tone relations. He swathes his drawings in modulations of grey, blue, green and brown,—colours which remind one of moss on crumbling Gothic sculpture. It is a very reticent scheme, but certainly Rackham’s own. His subject matter demanded this narrow gamut, but a retrospective exhibition of his work reveals a gradual tendency to make his colours more intense, and we frequently find him accentuating his warm browns and tone of ivory, with slight accents of gay colour. Even his inimitable silhouettes for Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, are cleverly spotted with green or scarlet. When we arrive at his most recent drawings like those for Phillpotts’ Dish of Apples, we find them light and sparkling with passionate rose, glowing greens and primrose yellow. Instead of his early harmony of tone, he now secures a harmony of colour. This fresh note, happily struck in his fine Coming of Spring, will be hailed with delight by all his admirers, and with amazement by the vast group of his indifferent imitators. The favour which most artists enjoy gradually dwindles, and memory must supply them with consolations, but Arthur Rackham’s ardour is still like a flame. His ingenuities and his whimsies are mellower than ever before and the new drawings and paintings, many of which are his choicest works technically and artistically, are bound to enhance his reputation and widen his popularity.

Martin Birnbaum

September, 1922

Books Illustrated by

Arthur Rackham

Note: The illustrations in items marked (*) were not made for these books but were re-issued in book form from earlier work.

A List of

First Editions of Published Books

Illustrated by

Arthur Rackham

The Dolly DialoguesAnthony Hope
1894, London, Westminster Gazette

SunriselandA. Berlyn
1894, London, Jarrold & Sons

Guide to Wells and Neighbourhood
1894, London, Jarrold & Sons

Sketch Book; 2 vols.Washington Irving
1895, New York, Putnams

Tales of a Traveler; 2 vols.Washington Irving
1895, New York, Putnams

Bracebridge Hall; 2 vols.Washington Irving
1896, New York, Putnams

In the Evening of his Days—A Study of Mr. Gladstone in Retirement
1896, London, Westminster Gazette

The Zankiwank and the BletherwitchS. J. Adair Fitz-Gerald
1896, London, J. M. Dent & Co.

The Money-SpinnerHenry Seton Merriman
and S. G. Tallentyre
1896, London, Smith, Elder & Co.

The Grey LadyHenry Seton Merriman
1897, London, Smith, Elder & Co.

Two Old Ladies, Two Foolish Fairies and a Tom Cat: The Surprising Adventures of Tuppy and Tue*Maggie Browne
1897, London, Cassell & Co.

EvelinaFrances Burney
1898, London, George Newnes

The Ingoldsby LegendsThomas Ingoldsby
1898, London, J. M. Dent & Co.

Gulliver’s TravelsJonathan Swift
1899, London, J. M. Dent & Co.

Feats on the FiordHarriet Martineau
1899, London, J. M. Dent & Co.

Tales from ShakespearCharles and Mary Lamb
1899, London, J. M. Dent & Co.

Fairy TalesThe Brothers Grimm
1900, London, Freemantle & Co.

Queen Mab’s Fairy Realm*
1901, London, George Newnes

Two Years Before the MastR. H. Dana, Jr.
1904, London, Collins

Rip Van WinkleWashington Irving

1905, London, William Heinemann. Large Paper Edition; 250 copies signed by the artist; bound in vellum.

Puck of Pook’s HillRudyard Kipling
1906, New York, Doubleday, Page & Co.

Peter Pan in Kensington GardensJ. M. Barrie

1906, London, Hodder & Stoughton. Large Paper Edition; 500 copies signed by the artist; bound in vellum.

Alice’s Adventures in WonderlandLewis Carroll

N. D. [1907] London, William Heinemann; New York, Doubleday, Page & Co.; Large Paper Edition; 1130 copies for Great Britain and Colonies; bound in white cloth; also a Large Paper Limited Edition for America; published by Doubleday, Page & Co.

The Ingoldsby LegendsThomas Ingoldsby

1907, London, J. M. Dent & Co.; New York, E. P. Dutton & Co.; Large Paper Edition; 560 copies signed by the artist; bound in vellum. [Reprinted from edition of 1898 with added illustrations.]

Fairy TalesThe Brothers Grimm

1907, London, Constable & Co. [Reprinted from edition of 1899 with added illustrations]. 1909, reissued in a Large Paper Edition; 750 copies for Great Britain and Colonies; signed by the artist; bound in vellum; also a Large Paper Limited Edition for America published by Doubleday, Page & Co.

The Land of Enchantment*
1907, London, Cassell & Co.

The Cotter’s Saturday Night*Robert Burns
1908, London, J. Hewetson & Son

A Midsummer Nights DreamWilliam Shakespear

1908, London, William Heinemann; New York, Doubleday, Page & Co.; Large Paper Edition; 1000 copies for Great Britain and Colonies; signed by the artist; bound in vellum; also a Large Paper Limited Edition for America published by Doubleday, Page & Co.

UndineDe la Motte Fouqué

1909, London, William Heinemann; New York, Doubleday, Page & Co.; Large Paper Edition; 1000 copies for Great Britain and Colonies; signed by the artist; bound in vellum; also a Large Paper Limited Edition for America published by Doubleday, Page & Co.

Gulliver’s TravelsJonathan Swift

1909, London, J.M. Dent & Co.; New York, E. P. Dutton & Co.; Large Paper Edition; 750 copies signed by the artist; bound in white cloth. [Reprinted from Edition of 1899 with added illustrations.]

Tales from ShakespearCharles and Mary Lamb

1909, London, J. M. Dent & Co; New York, E.P. Dutton & Co.; Large Paper Edition with Extra Plate; 750 copies signed by the artist; bound in white cloth. [Reprinted from edition of 1899 with added illustrations.]

Stories of King ArthurA. L. Haydon
1910, London and New York, Cassell & Co.

The Book of Betty Barber*Maggie Browne
1910, London, Duckworth & Co.

The Rheingold and the ValkyrieRichard Wagner

1910, London, William Heinemann; New York, Doubleday, Page & Co.; Large Paper Edition; 1150 copies; signed by the artist; bound in vellum.

Siegfried and the Twilight of the GodsRichard Wagner

1911, London, William Heinemann; New York, Doubleday, Page & Co.; Large Paper Edition; 1150 copies; signed by the artist; bound in vellum.

Aesop’s Fables

1912, London, William Heinemann; New York, Doubleday, Page & Co.; Large Paper Edition; 1150 copies; signed by the artist; bound in white cloth.

Mother Goose

1913, London, William Heinemann, Large Paper Edition; 1130 copies for Great Britain and Colonies; signed by the artist; bound in white cloth; also a Large Paper Limited Edition for America published by The Century Co.

Faithful Friends*
1913, London, Blackie

Arthur Rackham’s Book of Pictures

1913, London, William Heinemann; Large Paper Edition; 1130 copies for Great Britain and Colonies; signed by the artist; bound in white cloth; also a Large Paper Limited Edition for America published by The Century Co.

ImaginaJulia E. Ford
1914, New York, Duffield & Co.

A Christmas CarolCharles Dickens

1915, London, William Heinemann; J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia; Large Paper Edition; 525 copies for Great Britain and Colonies; signed by the artist; bound in vellum.

The Allies’ Fairy Book

N. D. [1916] London, William Heinemann; Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott Co.; Large Paper Edition; 525 copies signed by the artist; bound in blue cloth.

Little Brother and Little SisterThe Brothers Grimm

1917, London, Constable & Co.; Large Paper Edition with Extra Signed Plate; 525 copies signed by the artist; bound in grey cloth.

The Romance of King Arthurabridged by Alfred W. Pollard

1917, London, Macmillan & Co.; Large Paper Edition; 500 copies signed by the artist; bound in vellum.

English Fairy Talesretold by F. A. Steel

1918, London, Macmillan & Co.; 500 copies signed by the artist; bound in vellum.

The Springtide of Life; Poems of ChildhoodA. C. Swinburne

1918, London, William Heinemann; Large Paper Edition with Extra Plate; 765 copies signed by the artist; bound in white with vellum back.

Snickerty NickJulia E. Ford
1919, New York, Moffatt, Yard & Co.

Cinderellaretold by C. S. Evans

1919, London, William Heinemann; Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott Co.; Large Paper Edition with Extra Plate; 525 copies H. M. paper and 325 copies Japan vellum, signed by the artist; bound in white with vellum back.

Some British Ballads

N. D. [1919] London, Constable & Co.; Large Paper Edition; 575 copies signed by the artist; bound in vellum.

The Sleeping Beautytold by C. S. Evans

1920, London, William Heinemann; Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott Co.; Large Paper Edition with Extra Plate; 625 copies signed by the artist; bound in white with vellum back.

Irish Fairy TalesJames Stephens

1920, London, Macmillan & Co.; Large Paper Edition; 525 copies signed by the artist; bound in white with vellum back.

SnowdropThe Brothers Grimm

1920, London, Constable & Co. [Reprinted from Grimm’s Fairy Tales, 1909, with added illustrations.]

Hansel and GrethelThe Brothers Grimm

1920, London, Constable & Co. [Reprinted from Grimm’s Fairy Tales, 1909, with added illustrations.]

ComusJohn Milton

1921, London, William Heinemann; New York, Doubleday, Page & Co.; Large Paper Edition; 550 copies signed by the artist; bound in white with vellum back.

A Dish of ApplesEden Phillpotts

1921, London and New York, Hodder & Stoughton; Large Paper Edition; 500 copies signed by the artist and author; bound in cream white cloth.

B R

 

At the Printing House of William Edwin Rudge

Mount Vernon, New York

 

175 copies