Arthur Rackham's Book of Pictures

by Arthur Rackham, Arthur Quiller-Couch

ARTHUR RACKHAM’S
BOOK OF PICTURES

 

BOOKS ILLUSTRATED BY
ARTHUR RACKHAM

Uniform with this Volume. 15s. net each.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. By William Shakespeare.

RIP VAN WINKLE. By Washington Irving.

THE INGOLDSBY LEGENDS OF MIRTH & MARVEL. By Thomas Ingoldsby, Esq.

THE RING OF THE NIBLUNG. By Richard Wagner. Translated by Margaret Armour.

I.	THE RHINEGOLD AND THE VALKYRIE.
II.	SIEGFRIED AND THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS.

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UNDINE. By De la Motte Fouqué. Adapted from the German by W. L. Courtney. 7s. 6d. net.

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6s. net each.

ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. By Lewis Carroll. With a Proem by Austin Dobson.

ÆSOP’S FABLES. A New Translation by V. S. Vernon Jones. With an Introduction by G. K. Chesterton.

MOTHER GOOSE. A Book of Nursery Rhymes.

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LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN.

1 The Magic Cup

ARTHUR RACKHAM’S
BOOK OF PICTURES

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH

 

1913
All rights reserved

NOTE

A few of the illustrations in this book have been published before in magazines or periodicals; in most cases as first sketches in black and white only. These have since been carried out as pictures, and in that form are reproduced here for the first time. In this connection my thanks are due to the proprietors of the Ladies’ Field and the Pall Mall Magazine. I am also much indebted to the owners of several of the pictures who have so kindly allowed me to borrow them for reproduction.

A. R.

I	OF•THE LITTLE PEOPLE

1	THE MAGIC CUP
2	ELVES
3	SEEKERS FOR TREASURE
4	GOBLIN THIEVES
5	BY THE WAY
6	THE LITTLE PEOPLE’S MARKET
7	WEE FOLK
8	MALICE
9	THE MAN WHO WAS TERRIFIED BY GOBLINS

IICLASSIC

10	DANAË
	Danaë was the daughter of the king of Argos, Acrisius. An oracle had foretold that she would one day give birth to a son, who would kill her father. So Acrisius for safety’s sake shut her up in a tower, where, nevertheless, she was visited by Zeus in a shower of gold and became the mother of Perseus. Acrisius put the mother and child into a chest and exposed them on the sea. But the chest drifted ashore on the island of Seriphos, Danäe and her child were saved and Perseus lived to fulfil the oracle’s prophecy.
11	THE DRAGON OF THE HESPERIDES
12	DRYAD

III

13	JACK THE GIANT KILLER
	In the course of his adventures, Jack sleeps at the house of a monstrous Welsh giant with two heads. In the morning he has breakfast with the giant. Each has a bowl containing four gallons of hasty pudding. “One would have thought that the greater portion of so extrava­gant an allowance would have been declined by our hero, but he was unwilling the giant should imagine his incapability to eat it, and accordingly placed a large leather bag under his loose coat in such a position that he could convey the pudding into it without the deception being perceived. Breakfast at length being finished, Jack excited the giant’s curiosity by offering to show him an extraordinary sleight of hand; so taking a knife, he ripped the leather bag, and out, of course, descended on the ground all the hasty pudding. The giant had not the slightest suspicion of the trick, veritably believing the pudding came from its natural receptacle, and having the same antipathy to being beaten, exclaimed in true Welsh, ‘Odds splutters, hur can do that trick hurself.’ The sequel may be readily guessed. The monster took the knife, and thinking to follow Jack’s example with impunity, killed himself on the spot.”
14	JACK AND THE BEAN STALK
	Jack clambers down the beanstalk and chops it through with his axe; and the giant who is descending after him falls to the earth and is killed.
15	PUSS IN BOOTS
	Puss in Boots was the sole possession of a poor youth. The cat, however, manages by a succession of clever tricks to make his master’s fortune. He gains for him the fine castle and vast estates that belonged to an ogre by the same device that Loge used to get the Ring of the Niblungs from Alberich. He calls at the castle and, by pretending to doubt the ogre’s magic powers, he induces him to change himself first into a lion and then into a mouse, whereupon he falls upon him and eats him up. Perrault.
16	ADRIFT
	“I will put on my new red shoes,” she said one morning, “those which Kay has not seen, and then I will go down to the river and ask it about him.” It was quite early; little Gerda kissed her old grandmother, who was asleep, put on the red shoes, and went out quite alone through the town gate towards the river. “Is it true that you have taken my little play­mate? I will make you a present of my red shoes if you will give him back to me.” And she thought the waves nodded to her so strangely; she then took her red shoes, the most precious she had, and threw them both out into the river, but they fell close to the bank and the little billows soon carried them ashore to her; it seemed as if the river would not take the dearest treasure she had because it could not give back little Kay to her; but then she thought she had not thrown the shoes out far enough, and so she climbed into a boat which was lying among the rushes, and went right to the farthest end of it and threw the shoes into the water; but the boat was not fastened, and its motion as she got into it sent it adrift from the bank. As soon as she noticed this she hastened to get out of the boat, but before she could jump ashore it was an arm’s length from the bank, and it drifted rapidly down the river. The Snow Queen. Andersen.
17	THE FROG PRINCE
	The youngest daughter of the King loses her golden ball in a well in the forest where she has been playing. A frog hears her crying and bargains with her before he fetches back her ball. He will not accept her offer of her pretty dresses, or her pearls or diamonds, or even of her golden crown, but makes her promise that she will be fond of him and let him be her playmate, sit by her at table, eat out of her plate, drink out of her cup and sleep in her little bed—“if you will promise all this,” he says, “I will dive down and bring you back your golden ball.” Of course she agrees, thinking she may safely promise a frog anything he asks no matter how absurd it is. The frog brings back her ball, and the Princess has to keep all her promises much to her chagrin. But all ends happily. The frog proves to be a bewitched Prince, is restored to his natural form, and marries the Princess. Grimm.
18	SANTA CLAUS

IV

19	MARJORIE AND MARGARET
20	THE LITTLE PIPER
21	ON THE BEACH
22	THE BROAD WALK, KENSINGTON GARDENS
	“In the Broad Walk, you meet all the people who are worth knowing.” Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. J. M . Barrie.

V

23	THE GREEN DRAGON
24	ONCE UPON A TIME
25	THE SEA SERPENT
26	THE WIZARD
27	THE HAUNTED WOOD
28	ELFIN REVELLERS
29	HI! YOU UP THERE
30	THE GOSSIPS
31	JACK FROST
32	MOTHER GOOSE
33	THE WIND AND THE WAVES
34	FOG
	Bidden to a party at a friend’s house, but im­prisoned by the weather, the artist conveyed his explanations and regrets to his hostess by means of this drawing.
35	SHADES OF EVENING
36	THE LEVIATHAN
	“He maketh the deep to boil like a pot . . . . . . He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be hoary.”

VI	VARIOUS

37	CUPID’S ALLEY
	“O, Love’s but a dance,    Where Time plays the fiddle!   See the couples advance,—   O, Love’s but a dance!   A whisper, a glance—    ‘Shall we twirl down the middle?’   O, Love’s but a dance,    Where Time plays the fiddle! *** “Strange Dance! ’Tis free to Rank and Rags:  Here no distinction flatters, Here riches shakes its money-bags,  And Poverty its tatters: Church, Army, Navy, Physic, Law;—  Maid, Mistress, Master, Valet; Long locks, grey hairs, bald heads, and a’,—  They bob—in ‘Cupid’s Alley.’” Austin Dobson The picture is in the National Gallery of British Art.
38	A COURT IN THE ALHAMBRA
39	BASTINADO
40	THE FAIRY WIFE
	“In a mild and steady light, which came from no illumination of moon or stars, but seemed to be interfused with the air, in the strong, warm wind which wrapped the fell-top upon a sward of bent grass which ran toward the tarn and ended in swept reeds, he saw six young women dancing in a ring. Not to any music that he could hear did they move, nor was the rhythm of their move­ment either ordered or wild. It was not formal dancing, and it was not at all a Bacchic rout: rather they flitted hither and thither on the turf, now touching hands, now straining heads to one another, crossing, meeting, parting, winding about and about with the purposeless and untirable frivolity of moths. They seemed neither happy nor unhappy, they made no sound; it looked to the lad as if they had been so drifting from the beginning, and would so drift to the end of things temporal. **** “ . . . . then, circling round him, they swept him forward on the wind, past Silent Water, over the Edge, out on to the fells, on and on and on, and never stopped till they had reached Knapp Forest, that dreadful place. “There, in the hushed aisles and glades, they played with this new found creature—played with him, fought for him, and would have loved him if he had been minded for such adventuring. **** “Andrew King, like young Tamlane, might have sojourned with them for ever and a day but for one thing. He saw by chance a seventh maiden—a white-faced, woebegone, horror-struck Seventh Sister, blenched and frozen under a great beech. She may have been there through­out his commerce with the rest, or she may have been revealed to him in a flash then and there. So as it was, he saw her suddenly, and thereafter saw no other at all. She held his eyes waking; he left his playmates and went to her, where she crouched.” Maurice Hewlett.
41	THE SIGNAL
42	BUTTERFLIES
43	HAULING TIMBER
44	THE REGENT’S CANAL

Chapters (not listed in original)

Introduction 17

Of the Little People Plates  2- 9

Classic Plates 10-12

Some Fairy Tales Plates 13-18

Some Children Plates 19-22

Grotesque & Fantastic Plates 23-36

Various Plates 37-44