Arthur Rackham

He never lost the joy and sense of wonderment and he never gave in to the baser styles that fell in and out of favor over the years. From Queen Victoria's death in 1901 to the start of World War I, Rackham's illustrations preserved a lifestyle and a sensibility that kept the frighteningly modern future at bay. His beautiful drawings were the antithesis of the industrial advances that allowed them to be printed at affordable prices. Even into the twenties and thirties, his art was a constant reminder of those aspects of innocence that had been left behind.

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The illustrations of Arthur Rackham are at once enchanting, inspiring, melancholy, and for me personally, somewhat saddening. His work is amazing, rich, deep, technical, sporadic, and emotional… as a striving illustrator myself, how can I communicate such essence similarly? Surly, it is a different time: one could once get a fine education in the arts; to learn traditional techniques and methods to then adapt to the world of the day. This is no longer so. Speak to most any artist of classical worth and they will tell of struggles against their education; success in spite of it. Where dose one go to follow in the footsteps of a master?



Extensive Rackham Gallery

Shayne