second part of this gallery
20th Century European Art
20th Century Overview

European Art before World War I Arthur Rackham

To get a larger version of a picture, click on the thumbnail version.

  Arthur Rackham

born: London, England; 19 Sept. 1867
died: Limpsfield, Surry; 6 Sept. 1939

Reared in London, Rackham enrolled in evening classes at the Lambeth School of Art in 1884 and spent seven years studying there while also working full-time in an insurance office. While a staff artist for a newspaper, the Westminster Budget (1892-96), he also began illustrating books. He became skillful using the new halftone process, and his drawings began to reveal a unique range of imagination. Rackham achieved renown with the publication of a 1900 edition of the Grimm brothers' Fairy Tales featuring his illustrations. He illustrated a limited edition of Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle (1905), which made him known in America as well. In 1908 Rackham was made a full member of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours.

He was inspired by the early 16th-century German artists like Dürer and Altdorfer. Rackham illustrations are noted for invoking the spirit of the story. He illustrated more than 60 books, including works of Wagner (all the illustrations for the Ring of the Nieblungen are in the museum), William Shakespeare, James Barrie, Charles Dickens, Jonathan Swift, Izaak Walton, John Milton, and Edgar Allan Poe, as well as Mother Goose rhymes and several further collections of fairy tales.

Illustrations for the Wagner Four Opera Saga:

Der Ring Des Nibelungen

 

The Prelude:          Das Rheingold  The First Night:     Die Walküre  The Second Night: Siegfried  The Third Night:    Die Gotterdammerung

Loge Makes the Magic Fire

Forty-Eight Rackham Illustrations for Wagner's Ring

First Part of European Pre-war Art

20th Century European Art
20th Century Overview