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, depicting Fasolt and Fafnir siezing Freia.]]Arthur Rackham (19 September 1867 – 6 September 1939) was an English book illustrator.

as 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
Lambeth School of Art

Lambeth School of Art was founded in 1854 by William Gregory as a night school associated with the St. Mary the Less Church in London.The potter Henry Doulton had his works nearby and he began supporting the school early on....
. In 1892 he quit his job and started working for The Westminster Budget as a reporter and illustrator.






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, depicting Fasolt and Fafnir siezing Freia.]]Arthur Rackham (19 September 1867 – 6 September 1939) was an 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
Lambeth School of Art

Lambeth School of Art was founded in 1854 by William Gregory as a night school associated with the St. Mary the Less Church in London.The potter Henry Doulton had his works nearby and he began supporting the school early on....
. 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
Sketch story

A sketch story, in older usage, is a piece of writing that is generally shorter than a short story, and contains very little, if any, Plot . The term was most popularly-used in the late nineteenth century....
 of Anthony Hope
Anthony Hope

Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, better known as Anthony Hope , was an English people novelist and playwright. Although he was a prolific writer, especially of adventure novels, he is remembered best for only two books: The Prisoner of Zenda and its sequel Rupert of Hentzau ....
, who later went on to write The Prisoner of Zenda
The Prisoner of Zenda

The Prisoner of Zenda is an adventure novel by Anthony Hope, 1894 in literature. The king of the fictional country of Ruritania is abducted on the eve of his coronation, and the protagonist, an English gentleman on holiday who fortuitously resembles the monarch, is persuaded to act as his political decoy in an attempt to save the situat...
. 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 1912. His works were included in numerous exhibitions, including one at the Louvre
Louvre

The Louvre Museum , located in Paris, is a historic monument, and a national museum of France. It is a central landmark, located on the Rive Droite of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement of Paris ....
 in Paris in 1914. Arthur Rackham died 1939 of cancer
Cancer

Cancer is a class of diseases in which a group of cell display uncontrolled growth , invasion , and sometimes metastasis . These three malignant properties of cancers differentiate them from benign tumors, which are self-limited, do not invade or metastasize....
 in his home in Limpsfield
Limpsfield

Limpsfield is a village and parish in the east of the county of Surrey, England near Oxted at the foot of the North Downs. It lies between the A25 road to the south and the M25 motorway to the north, near the Clacket Lane services....
, Surrey
Surrey

Surrey is a counties of England in the South East England of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire, and Berkshire....
.

Works

  • Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
    Brothers Grimm

    The Brothers Grimm , Jakob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were Germans academics who were best known for publishing collections of folk tales and fairy tales and for their work in linguistics, relating to how the sounds in words shift over time ....
     (1900)
  • Rip van Winkle
    Rip Van Winkle

    "Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving published in 1819 in literature, as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist....
     (1905)
  • Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens
    Peter Pan

    Peter Pan is a character created by Scotland novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie . A mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to aging, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys , interacting with Mermaid, Native_Americans_in_the_United_States, f...
     (50 colour plates, 1906)
  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
    Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

    Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a novel written by England author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells the story of a girl named Alice who falls down a Rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar and anthropomorphic creatures....
     (13 colour plates, 1907)
  • A Midsummer Night's Dream
    A Midsummer Night's Dream

    A Midsummer Night's Dream is a romantic love Shakespearean comedies by William Shakespeare, suggested by "The Knight's Tale" from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, written around 1594 to 1596....
     (40 colour plates, 1908)
  • Undine
    Undine (novella)

    Undine is a novel by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqu? concerning Undine, a water spirit who marries a Knight named Huldebrand in order to gain a soul....
     (15 colour plates, 1909)
  • Der Ring des Nibelungen
    Der Ring des Nibelungen

    Der Ring des Nibelungen is a literature cycle of four epic poetry music dramas by the Germany composer Richard Wagner. The operas are based loosely on characters from the Sagas and the Nibelungenlied....
     ("The Ring of the Nibelung")
    • The Rhinegold and The Valkyrie (34 colour plates, 1910)
    • Siegfried and The Twilight of the Gods (32 colour plates, 1911)
  • The Romance of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Alfred W. Pollard
    Alfred W. Pollard

    Alfred William Pollard was an English bibliography, widely credited for bringing a higher level of scholarly rigor to the study of William Shakespeare texts....
     (23 colour and monotone plates, 1917)
  • English Fairy Tales by Flora Annie Steel
    Flora Annie Steel

    Flora Annie Steel was an England writer. She was the daughter of George Webster. In 1867 she married a member of the Indian civil service, and for the next twenty-two years lived in India, chiefly in the Punjab region, with which most of her books are connected....
     (1918)
  • The Springtide of Life by Algernon Charles Swinburne
    Algernon Charles Swinburne

    Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, controversial in his own day....
     (8 colour plates, 1918)
  • A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys
    A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys

    A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys is a book by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is a re-writing of some of the most famous of the ancient Greek myths in a volume for children....
     (16 colour plates, 1922)
  • The Tempest
    The Tempest

    The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1610?11, although some researchers have argued for an earlier dating. Its protagonist is the banished sorcerer Prospero, rightful Duke of Milan, who uses his magical powers to punish and forgive his enemies when he raises a tempest that drives them ashore....
     (20 colour plates, 1926).
  • Tales of Mystery & Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe
    Edgar Allan Poe

    Edgar Allan Poe was an American poet, Short story writer, Editing and Literary criticism, and is considered part of the American Romanticism. Best known for his tales of Mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the Detective fiction genre....
     (1935)


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 woodblock
Woodcut

Woodcut - formally known as Xylography - is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges....
s.

Influence


In one of the featurettes on the DVD of Pan's Labyrinth
Pan's Labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth is a 2006 in film Spanish films of 2006 Spanish language fantasy film written and directed by Mexico film-maker Guillermo del Toro....
, and in the commentary track for Hellboy
Hellboy (film)

Hellboy is a 2004 in film supernatural Action film directed by Guillermo del Toro. The film is based on the Dark Horse Comics work Hellboy: Seed of Destruction by Mike Mignola....
, director Guillermo Del Toro
Guillermo del Toro

Guillermo del Toro G?mez is an Academy Award-nominated Mexican filmmaker. He is one of the film directors known as the Three Amigos that include Alfonso Cuar?n and Alejandro Gonz?lez I??rritu....
, 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.

Gallery


External links