Exhibiting widely at home and abroad, including several solo shows at the Leicester Galleries, Rackham won many awards. His first publications included, most notably, The Ingoldsby Legends (1898) and Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare (1899) and with Rip Van Winkle (1905), Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1908) his reputation was assured. For some 15 years his only serious rival as a fairy story and gift book illustrator was Edmund Dulac. Working in both black and white and colour, he enhanced the expressive linear quality of his drawing with a perspectival use of a muted range of pigments that could be accurately reproduced by new printing processes. He assimilated a wide variety of influences, including the work of E J Sullivan and the Victorian fairy painters, and by the turn of the century had evolved his characteristic style. Rackham began to illustrate books in 1894, and this activity offered a field in which he could expand his imaginative gifts. Employed as a clerk at the Westminster Fire Insurance Office between 18, he resigned from the post to join the staff of the Pall Mall Budget, later transferring to the Westminster Budget.
He visited Australia in 1884 and, on his return, enrolled in evening classes at Lambeth School of Art as he looked for work. Arthur Rackham was born in Lewisham on 19 September 1867 and was educated at the City of London School. The images tend to be remembered as grotesque and spine tingling but, wide-ranging and always apt, their mood is as likely to be humorous or tender. Arthur Rackham, VPRWS (1867-1939) First and foremost among illustrators of the Gift Book, Arthur Rackham had a particular affinity for the northern literary tradition, from Hans Christian Andersen to Richard Wagner, and developed a perfect visual response in his intensely observed characterisation and atmospheric depiction of setting.
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