THE LAST YEARS
Andersen,’ Walpole replied. ‘He has risen nobly to his subject. He has acquired a new tenderness and grace. His fantasy is stronger than ever.’ Twenty-five years after its publication, the Hans Andersen had become one of the most difficult of Rackham’s books to buy second-hand.
With the Hans Andersen may be mentioned The Arthur Rackham Fairy Book, undertaken in the same propitious mood and published in the following year. The illustrations were all new, though it was not the first time, as Rackham admitted in his preface, that he had illustrated several of these old favourites of the nursery, ‘in the thirty years and more that my work has led me through enchanted lands’.
When we compare these two books with Rackham’s achievement in his Edwardian prime, the most remarkable thing to note is that he was maintaining such a consistent standard of excellence at the age of sixty-five. His methods had nevertheless undergone a subtle and almost imperceptible change. There was slight tendency away from over-all pre-Raphaelite fidelity to detail, and towards a measure of impressionism, at least in the backgrounds. A. S. Hartrick has described[1] a typical example of Rackham’s method in Edwardian days: how he would run a fairly strong tint of raw umber over his pen drawing – except for a few whites when he needed some accents of pure colour in the end. ‘This warm tone he lifted with a wet brush as he went along, working in local colour as wanted, while carefully watching the main gradations – warm to cold, and vice versa.’ It had been a method helpful to reproduction, giving a pleasing general tone ‘like old vellum’, and with variations it had served Rackham well. In later years, however, his approach was more flexible and adaptable; a little influence may perhaps be allowed to weakened eyesight; we notice him using cleaner, brighter colours (and his elves and goblins have sharper noses!). Conscious of working for a new generation, Rackham intended to please them as he had pleased their
- ↑ In The Old Water-Colour Society’s Club Eighteenth Annual Volume, 1940.
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