EPILOGUE
choosing, may be thought doubtful. It is one thing to demonstrate the symbolism of a fairy-tale, which may plausibly be done, and another thing to use that information to psycho-analyse the illustrator. As a man’s character is always reflected in his work, we must be aware that Rackham’s sensitivity and the sweep of his imagination were both unusual. This biographical sketch presents the cheerful, methodical artist whom ‘all men knew’, but allows the psychologists to have their say elsewhere.
In assessing Rackham’s place as an illustrator, there is no need to make extravagant claims, no need to match him against the great Victorians (though it might be mentioned that his subject-matter was healthier than Beardsley’s and his imaginative range wider than Tenniel’s). Despite the German influences, Rackham’s work remained utterly English in spirit. Succeeding and supplanting Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway and Walter Crane, Rackham possessed the ability and the thoroughness required to make the most of the new methods of reproduction that became available to him, and the genius to make his drawings immediately distinctive and worthwhile – as effective, indeed, on the walls of a room as between the covers of a book. His reward has been not only a world-wide reputation but the affection felt by a multitude, young and old, for the ‘Beloved Enchanter’, ‘Le Peintre Sorcier’.
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