ART SCHOOL AND AFTER
anything for his paper, Rackham portrayed many of the leading actresses, sportsmen, writers, and politicians of the day. The Queen and Mr Gladstone were among his most frequent subjects. He was often called upon to celebrate royal occasions (see pages 35 and 37).
Some of Rackham’s voluminous journalism is shown in this book. For the most part it is conventional and unimaginative – in striking contrast to the work by which he is best known – but already he was demonstrating his mastery of line. An artist so deft and conscientious was an asset to the Westminster Budget. And there were moments, as with his disquieting full-page fantasy ‘The Influenza Fiend’ (1893), which unmistakably foreshadowed the fanciful and at times weirdly imaginative illustrator that he was to become.
Rackham continued to draw for the Westminster Budget until 1896 but from 1893 onwards became increasingly occupied with book illustrations. His first published book (1893) was a Nord-deutscher Lloyd travel brochure, To The Other Side by Thomas Rhodes, now very scarce, for which he provided black-and-white drawings in the careful rounded style of his early water-colours. The drawings included views of Salt Lake City and San Francisco; of the Sentinel Rock, Yosemite, the Royal Gorge and Pike’s Peak, all based on photographs. Ten of these drawings fetched eighty pounds when they were sold at Sothebys in 1957. Other commercial commissions were for an illustrated guide to Wells-next-the-Sea (1894) and seventy-five drawings in Sunrise-Land: Rambles in Eastern England by Mrs Alfred Berlyn (1894), both books carrying advertisements for the Great Eastern Railway. Some of his journalistic work also reappeared in book form, notably a full page drawing of Irving from the Westminster Budget which was included in Walter Calvert’s Souvenir of Sir Henry Irving (1895), while one of his drawings of Gladstone was used to illustrate In the Evening of his Days: A Study of Mr Gladstone in Retirement by Hulda Friederichs (1896).38
