Arthur Rackham
Who
English book illustrator, born in London in 1867 and died at Limpsfield, Surrey, in 1939. He worked as an insurance clerk while studying part-time at the Lambeth School of Art, then as a reporter-illustrator on the Westminster Budget, before book illustration became his whole career.
Why they matter
His Rip Van Winkle of 1905, with 51 colour pictures, was a turning point in how illustrated books were made and sold, and his robust pen-and-ink line under thin, layered watercolour washes became the look of fairy tales for a generation of readers. Film designers still borrow from him: Guillermo del Toro has cited him for the creatures of Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy.
What to buy
The books as issued are the work, and they are genuinely collectable. His major titles came out in two forms at once: a de luxe limited edition, often bound in vellum and usually signed by Rackham, and a smaller, plainer quarto trade edition, with popular titles later reissued in cheaper octavo form. The trade quartos and the later reissues are the honest entry tier; the signed limited editions are the top of the book market, and the numbered limitation page with his signature is what you are paying for, so check it is present. Late limited editions exist too: Methuen's 1951 Wind in the Willows was limited to 500 copies and is not signed. The drawings themselves sold through the Leicester Galleries in his lifetime, so some are in private hands, but that is a separate and far more expensive market. Book: James Hamilton's Arthur Rackham: A Life with Illustration (Pavilion, 1990), drawn from his diaries and letters.
Notes
The Tate and the V&A hold his work. Public domain in most countries, so scans of the plates are freely available and poster reproductions are everywhere; a modern poster is only as good as the scan behind it.
Story
In 1908 Rackham was offered the chance to illustrate Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, and turned it down: he was committed to a deadline for A Midsummer Night's Dream. He regretted it almost at once. In 1909 three children wrote asking whether he planned to illustrate The Wind in the Willows, and his reply shows how much he wished he had said yes.
The chance came back some thirty years later. George Macy, whose Limited Editions Club in New York published fine illustrated books for subscribers, commissioned the pictures, and Rackham, by then in failing health and a perfectionist to the end, spent three years on them. They were the last illustrations he completed. He died at Limpsfield in Surrey on 6 September 1939 and never saw the book: the Limited Editions Club issued it in New York in 1940. British readers waited another decade for a Rackham Wind in the Willows of their own, which appeared in 1950. The book he had declined as a young man in a hurry became his farewell.
Key works
- Rip Van Winkle (1905) - 51 colour plates
- Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906)
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1907)
- A Midsummer-Night's Dream (1908)
- The Wind in the Willows (1940) - Limited Editions Club, New York, published after his death
In museum collections
- Arthur Rackham ('A Transpontine Cockney') (1934)
Art UK ↗ · Find a print ↗ - Undine at the Window (1915)
Yale University Art Gallery ↗ · Find a print ↗
See the work
Prints
Books
Originals
See also
Browse all 2,101 artists · Open in the directory · Where the work hangs: 8 museums on a map