Arthur Rackham's (1867-1939) haunting and dreamlike style has added to the enchantment and fantasy of the children's literature and his imitators are many.
Arthur Rackham began his career as a prolific English illustrator at the end of the 19th century. He was one of 12 children. At 18, he worked as a clerk at the Westminster Fire Office and began studying at the Lambeth School of Art, where he studied for seven years. In 1892 he quit his clerk job and started working for The Westminster Budget as a reporter and illustrator. His first book illustration was published in 1893.
Arthur Rackham married Edyth Starkie in 1903. They had one child, a daughter, Barbara, in 1908. Rackham drew and painted many images of Barbara.
Rackham was made a full member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour in 1908. He also won a gold medal at the Milan International Exhibition in 1906 and another one at the Barcelona International Exposition in 1911. His works appeared in numerous exhibitions, including one at the Louvre in Paris in 1914.
He studied drawing at evening classes at Lambeth School of Art (1884) for 7 years, at the same time that he was working full-time in insurance. He bagan as an illustrator of children's books, using the then new half-tone process. He first became known for his illustration to Grimm's Fairy Tales. In 1905, He made his American debut with his illustrations to Rip van Winkle and in 1906, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens was published. His final book was The Wind In the Willows was published in 1940, a year after his death at home in Limpsfield, Surrey in 1939.
These collections include illustrations of Arthur Rackham, from Wagner's The Ring of Nibelung, Midsummer Night's Dream, Twilight of the Gods, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, Alice in Wonderland, Mother Goose, Undine, Wind and the Willows, Gulliver's Travels, King of the Golden River and others.
I have added many new Rackham images. Some people had trouble downloading this page because of its length, so I have moved the Alice, Gulliver, Peter Pan, and Ring sections to their own pages. So if images that were here from your last visit no longer appear on this page, they have probably been moved to their own page. There will be a link in the appropriate section. Please stay calm. :)
Art Passions began a tribute to artists whose work I grew up, and whose work has meaning for me personally. The list of artists on artpassions.net, including recent additions to the site, as well as other information are available on the home page.
These links open to separate pages.
Alice in Wonderland - online book with Rackham images
Separate page will all illustrations to J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, some history and some interesting fairy marginalia.
Rackham - Peter Pan in Kensington GardensSeparate page. Online book also.
Rackham - Gulliver's Travels<Yes, all of them.
Yes, all of them.
The Old Gentleman Reclined on a Globe
Down the glen tramp little men
Laura would call the little ones
My life became a ceaseless scurry and wound and escape
Wild and shy and monstrous creatures ranged in her plains and forests
He might think, as he stared on a staring horse, "a boy cannot wag his tail to keep the flies off"
How he strained and panted to catch on that pursuing person
Then they went hand in hand in the country that smells of appleblossoms and honey
Sitting on a branch, she looked with angry woe at the straining and snarling horde below
The thumping of his big boots grew as continuous as the pattering of hailstones on a roof
"This one is fat," said Cuillen, and she rolled a bulky Fenian along like a wheel
He was surrounded by giant toads
They offered a cow for each leg of her cow, but she would not accept that offer
The Hag of the Mill was a bony, thin pole of a hag with odd feet
Not all of the images here are suitable for prints but some of the more popular ones are available at Artsy Craftsy. Your purchases there help keep Art Passions going, and help support my antique fairy tale book habit. My Rackham prints are larger-format and printed on cotton rag fine art paper, with archival inks. There are some Rackham prints that are not available elsewhere.
The Scriptorium offers art fonts and traditional fonts based on Rackham's work. The title image of this page shows one of his fonts. They also offer Rackham images for desktop publishing. Not fine art quality, but I was very happy with my test purchase there.
You can download a free demo version of Scriptorium's Rackham Italic in Zip format or Stuffit for MacOS. Installation instructions are included. Or try a demo version of the Rackham Goblins font: Zip format or Stuffit for MacOS.
Important: Please do not link directly to images at artpassions or download the entire site. See the FAQ for why this is a problem. If you download the entire site with an offline webstripper, you will take down the site. This will make me very grumpy and I will ban your IP address, entire domain or country, depending on how bad it was.
Note If you have questions about the art on these pages, please see the FAQ. The most common questions are answered there, including "what is it worth?" questions and "who gives me permission?" questions. You can write me, but I may take awhile getting back to you.
The Tale of Princess Tuvstarr and the Fish Pond
The Real Princess and The Princess and the Pea Exposed
Pages to download and color (for pre-readers)
A couple of these are our sister sites
Art Passions Fairy Tale Scholarship blog
Art Passions / Artsy Craftsy 2850 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Suite 429 Beaverton, OR 97005 Contact
Copyright information: Images on this website are believed to be copyright free. My words, however, are not so don't lift them and claim them as your own. If you believe there is a copyright issue, please see the FAQ for how to proceed. That said, I have spent no small amount of money on antique books and done a lot of work scanning and cleaning up the art here. Some sites, such as Wiki Art and others created libraries of my work without attribution and taking credit for making it available. That kind of takes some of the fun out of it. Still, you are welcome to use the images for any purpose, including displaying them on your blog or personal website, sharing them on social media, creating derivative works, and making their beauty available to others. Attribution is nice, but not required.