Seven Original Arthur Rackham Watercolors

by Stephen J. Gertz

[RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator]. BROWNING, Robert.
The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham.
London: George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd. [1934].
One of ten specially bound copies containing an original watercolor,
this copy being No. 4.

Between 1931 and 1936, famed book illustrator Arthur Rackham, as gifts to his close friends, specially ordered  nine to eleven copies of the following nine books he illustrated.

[RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator]. ROSSETTI, Christina.
Goblin Market. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham.
London: George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd. [1933].
One of ten specially bound copies containing an original watercolor,
this copy being No. 7.

1931: The Night Before Christmas
1931: The Compleat Angler
1932: Fairy Tales by Hans Andersen
1932: The King of the Golden River
1933: The Arthur Rackham Fairy Book
1933: Goblin Market
1934: The Pied Piper of Hamelin
1935: Poe’s Tales of Mystery & Imagination
1936: Peer Gynt

[RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator].
The Arthur Rackham Fairy Book.
A book of old favourites with new illustrations.
London: George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd. [1933].
One of ten special copies containing an original watercolor,
this copy being No. 8.

Rackham had them specially bound by renowned binders Sangorski & Sutcliffe and included an unique original watercolor in each.

[RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator]. RUSKIN, John.
The King of the Golden River. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham.
London: George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd. [1932].
One of nine specially bound copies with an original watercolor,
this being copy No. 6.  

The limitation leaves were printed on the verso of the half-titles and contain a statement written in ink by the publisher, George H. Harrap: "This edition, which contains an original painting by Arthur Rackham, is limited to nine [or ten] copies of which eight are for sale. George G. Harrap & Co Ltd."

[RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator]. POE, Edgar Allan.
Tales of Mystery & Imagination. Illustrated by Arthur Rackham.
London: George G. Harrap & Co., [1935].
One of ten special copies containing an original watercolor,
this copy being No. 5.

Including original art  in some copies of books he illustrated was not unusual for Rackham.

RACKHAM, Arthur, illustrator]. IBSEN, Henrik.
Peer Gynt. A Dramatic Poem by Henrik Ibsen.
Illustrated by Arthur Rackham.
London: George G. Harrap & Co., [1936].
One of ten special copies containing an original watercolor,
this copy being No. 7.

Original art, albeit simple pen & ink drawings, can be found, for instance, in trade edition copies of the Heinemann productions of Wagner, The Reingold & The Valkyrie (1910) and Siegfreid & The Twilight of the Gods (1911); and Hodder & Stoughton's signed and limited  edition of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906).

[RACKHAM, Arthur]. RHODES,Thomas.
To The Other Side. With Illustrations by Arthur Rackham & Alfred Bryan.
London: George Philip & Son, 1893.
Rackham's copy, and with an original watercolor by
Rackham with a lengthy inscription by Rackham,
signed and dated 1935.

Rackham's personal copy of Rhodes' To The Other Side (1893) - the first book he illustrated - is graced by a delicate watercolor. Rackham, per usual with his anthropomorphic trees, used his face as model. 

Special copies uniformly bound by Sangorski & Sutcliffe.

Because of their rarity and popularity with collectors, copies of Rackham-illustrated books with original art by him are not inexpensive, generally running into low five figures. For the Rackham aficionado they're worth every penny.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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The Bauhaus Bird Paradise of Carl Ernst Hinkefuss

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1929, graphic designer Carl Ernst Hinkefuss (1881-1970) published, Mein Vogel Paradies (My Bird Paradise), a tie-bound modern block book for children featuring stunning color lithographs depicting abstracted forms of birds reduced to their fundamental forms, accompanied by verse about each individual bird, both text (printed in silver ink) and images printed on black paper. A two-page introduction by Hinkefuss encourages children to create their own pictures based upon his simple designs.

Carl Ernst Hinkefuss was a popular Bauhaus illustrator known for modernist graphic design work that integrated art with commercial values. He did a great deal of advertising design for Hamburg Amerika oceanliners. Hinkefuss was also the editor of the design periodical Qualität, 1920-1932.

He "trained as a painter, graphic artist, and architect at the Königliche Kunstschule and the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin at the turn of the century. While still a student, Hinkefuss became interested in the idea of artists collaborating with the business world, and after graduation he became a commercial graphic designer. From 1905 to early 1910, he worked in the advertising and publicity departments of several firms in Berlin and Dessau, and then later in 1910 set out as an independent publicist in Berlin" (Online Archive of California). 

He ultimately partnered with Wilhelm Deffke (1887-1950) in Wilhemwerk, their commercial design house.

Prospectus for Mein Vogel Paradies, 1929.

According to the prospectus for the book, it was produced using a fifteen color offset-lithography process. The prospectus also mentions a gift box but, apparently, it was never produced; no copies in a publisher's gift box have ever been seen.

Mein Vogel Paradies is an extremely rare book. OCLC/KVK note only four copies in institutional holdings worldwide. According to the ABPC Index, 1923-2011, no copies have ever come to auction. Fine copies, if you can find them, now sell in the low five figures.

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HINKEFUSS, Carl Ernst. Mein Vogel Paradies. Gesamtwerk von Karl Ernst Hinkefuss. [Berlin: Verlag International GMBH / Internationale Propaganda für Qualitatserzeugnisse], 1929. First edition, limited to 1500 copies signed by the artist. Quarto (11 5/8 x 8 1/4 in.). [14]  leaves on black paper printed in silver and fourteen other colors. Color lithographs. Color pictorial wrappers side-stitched with black string.

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Book images courtesy of Aleph-Bet Books, with our thanks.

Image of prospectus courtesy of Wilhelmwerke, with our appreciation.
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Gaskin's Hans Christian Andersen and the Kelmscott Press

by Stephen J. Gertz

Extra illustrated title page.

"Mr. Gaskin's pictures ... of the tales are precisely what they should be, not because they belong to the manner of the Birmingham Art School and symbolize past all patience and affect the absence of aerial perspective shown in the very old wood cuts, but because, in spite of their mannerisms, they give life to the text and express it somehow or other in their long, lank Thumbelinas and Helgas and their young babes. They catch the attention and fix it upon the expression, arbitrary perhaps, yet adequate, of a persoality. Once seen, Mr. Gaskin's Thumbelina will always be the Thumbelina of the story..."

So said the New York Times book review in 1895 of a new edition of The Stories and Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen. Arthur J. Gaskin's illustrations to this edition would serve as his calling card to William Morris and lead to assignments for the Kelmscott Press, the most celebrated private press of them all.

The Philosopher's Stone.

Arthur Joseph Gaskin (1862 – 1928) was an English illustrator, painter, teacher and designer of jewellery and enamelwork. Gaskin was a member of the Birmingham Group of Artist-Craftsmen, which sought to apply the principles of the Arts and Crafts movement across the decorative arts. Like many of the group, Gaskin studied at the Birmingham School of Art under Edward R. Taylor and later taught there.

What the Moon Saw.

Gaskin worked as a decorative artist from 1890, and within a few years attracted the  attention of William Morris.

The Marsh King's Daughter.

"...Where in England was Morris to find the artists who could satisfactorily illustrate the Kelmscott books? The answer, surprisingly, was Birmingham, where the arts-and-crafts movement flourished more vigorously than anywhere else in the provinces, mainly through the influence of the municipal School of Art. 

She Was Good For Nothing.

"Three youthful artists associated with the School - Artur J. Gaskin, Charles M. Gere, and Edmund New - were doing attractive book illustrating during the 1890s, and Morris was aware of them and their work. 'Gaskin, a young Birmingham artist, called in the afternoon [at Kelmscott House] with a number of very pretty drawings for an edition of Hans Andersen which Geo Allen is going to publish,' [Sydney] Cockerell noted in his diary...

The Old House.

"...Morris's attitude towards Gaskin and Gere was ambivalent: he was grateful for their loyalty to the arts-and-crafts ideals, yet his praise for their work was often cautious and qualified. In an interview in the Daily Chronicle (9 Oct. 1893), he was quoted as saying that 'there is a great quantity of excellent art, but the only thing that is new, strictly speaking, is the rise of the Birmingham school of book decorators...these young men of the Birmingham School of Art - Mr. Gaskin [et al] - have given a new start to the art of book decorating.'

The Wild Swans.

"In another interview...two years later, however, Morris remarked: 'I think they have, in Gaskin and New, two very good men, who have ideas and originality. For the most part, however, they follow too slavishly the opposition to conventionality...but you must remember that the Birmingham people have not yet found their feet. They will do good work yet, I am sure.' This was faint praise indeed...

The Sleep of Holger Danske.

"Gaskin's relationship with Morris was, if anything, even more turbulent than Gere's. Subsequently known as a designer of jewelry, Gaskin was scheduled to illustrate a Kelmscott Press edition of The Roots of the Mountains that never materialized; Morris also arranged for him to design the pictures for The Well at the World's End and The Shepheard's Calendar (1896).

Illustration by Gaskin to The Shepheard's Calender (1896).

"The twelves designs for the latter book are impressive - Gordon Ray has called them 'perhaps the most successful of Kelmscott Press illustrations,' a judgment in which Colin Franklin concurs" (Peterson, The Kelmscott Press, pp. 157-8).

Big Claus and Little Claus.

The Rose Elf.

"Mr. George Allen issues  also a really excellent edition of Andersen's Fairy Tales. The translation is by Dr. H.O. Sommer, and there are 100 drawings by Mr. Arthur J. Gaskin, under whose direction the 'Book of Pictured Carols' was produced. It will be a pleasure to many to renew acquaintance with Big Claus and Little Claus, and all the other friends of our childhood, in this excellent edition" (Literary World, December 1, 1893).

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[GASKIN, Arthur J., illus.]. ANDERSEN, Hans Christian. Stories and Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen. Translated by H. Oskar Sommer. With 100 Pictures by Arthur J. Gaskin. London: George Allen, 1893.

One of 300 Large Paper Copies printed on hand-made paper. Two quarto volumes (9 3/4 x 7 5/16 in; 248 x 186 mm). [2], xi, [1, blank], 398, [2]; [2, blank], xii, 426, [2, blank] pp. Initials. One hundred black and white illustrations, many full page, including frontispieces and extra illustrated title pages.
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.

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Two Victorian Book Illustrators You Should Know About

by Stephen J. Gertz

Louis Rhead, from The Arabian Nights.

Original art work by Louis Rhead and Harry Furniss, two noted illustrators of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, are featured in an  exhibition at The Bookshop in Old New Castle, Delaware from May 1‐31, 2011, presented by the Kelmscott Bookshop.

Louis Rhead, from Heidi.

Louis Rhead (1857‐1926) was a British‐born American artist. His talent was evident early, and he studied art in Paris before being named at the age of twenty-four as the Art Director for D. Appleton, a U.S. publishing firm. In the early 1890s Rhead became a prominent poster artist. As the interest in posters waned in the late 1890s he turned to book illustration.

Louis Rhead, from Jonah and the Whale.

He illustrated numerous childrens books, including editions of Heidi, Robinson Crusoe, Hans Brinker, and Swiss Family Robinson. The exhibit features a collection of fifteen finished drawings and forty-six preliminary studies done for several of his books.

Louis Rhead, St. Nicholas.

These accomplished and charming works are executed in both pen and ink and pencil and vary in size and paper used. There are drawings for Hans Brinker, Heidi, Pilgrim’s Progress, and Arabian Nights, as well as many others.

Harry Furniss, Collection.

Also on exhibit are the illustrations  by Harry Furniss (1854‐1925), a collection of thirty-one original pen and ink drawings that Furniss did as illustrations for his last book, Paradise in Piccadilly: The Story of Albany, and the many celebrities who lived there over time, including Lord Byron, Gladstone, Bulwer‐Lytton, Disraeli, and many other notables.

Harry Furniss, Horse.

Furniss, who died in 1925, was a noted illustrator and caricaturist. He wrote and illustrated twenty‐nine books of his own, and illustrated over thirty books by other authors. The drawings for the exhibit vary in size and in the type of paper used. Each drawing is signed, and many have the titles of the subject and notes to the printer. This is a delightful trove of original illustrations by a popular artist of his time.

Harry Furniss, Rope Walk.

The Bookshop in Old New Castle is located on the second floor of the historic opera house at 308 Delaware Street in New Castle, Delaware. It is part of a rotating series of monthly exhibits offered by   Oak Knoll Books, Between the Covers Rare  Books, The  Kelmscott  Bookshop and  the Old Bookshop  of  Bordentown,  the four partner-booksellers who comprise the bookshop, which opened May 1, 2010. Each are members  of  the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America.  Exhibits at the shop will highlight fine materials that represent the booksellers' specialties.
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With thanks to Fran Durako and Susannah Horrum of The Kelmscott Bookshop for their assistance.
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Poe's Tales of Terror Inspire A Royal Exhibit

By Nancy Mattoon

Ivor Abrahams.
Masque of The Red Death.
Print on Paper From The E.A. Poe Series, 1976.
(All Images Courtesy of Royal Academy of Arts.)

Two portfolios of prints, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's chilling and melancholy tales and Edmund Burke's study of the aesthetics of passion and terror, make up a fascinating new exhibition at London's Royal Academy of Arts. Ivor Abrahams: Mystery and Imagination, brings together, for the first time, two sets of screenprints completed in the 1970's, and considered to be among the finest works created during "the golden age of printmaking in Britain." Abrahams created the two groups of works on paper in response to Poe's definition of art as "the reproduction of what the senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul," and Burke's thesis that pleasure and pain form the emotional and psychological underpinning of all fine art.

Ivor Abrahams.
Untitled Print On Paper From:
15 Lithographs To Edmund Burke, 1979.

Ivor Abrahams is primarily a sculptor, and many of his prints have the depth and magnitude of sculptures. His works are almost always figurative, rather than abstract. According to the Tate Modern, "Portions of buildings, gardens, domestic interiors and people - usually active - inhabit [Abrahams'] works that are fundamentally collages. These are built of photographic images that are cut, altered, painted over and turned into three-dimensional form." Contemporary advertising, especially signs and placards, hold a fascination for Abrahams, and as a struggling artist he once took a job creating shop window mannequins and displays for Adel Rootstein.

Ivor Abrahams.
Untitled Print On Paper From:
15 Lithographs To Edmund Burke, 1979.

Many of the images used in Abrahams' prints are taken from photographs in inexpensive magazines, such as the weekly publication, Amateur Gardening. Less frequently, he appropriated and altered high quality illustrations found in glossy periodicals from the 1920's, such as Country Life. This use of second-hand source material links much of his printed work to the Pop Art movement. Abrahams has donated much of the source material for his printmaking, including magazine clippings, photographs, sketches, and acetate stencils, to the Tate Gallery Archive.

Ivor Abrahams.
The Domain of Arnheim.
Print on Paper From The E.A. Poe Series, 1976.

The history of the Edgar Allan Poe portfolio is especially interesting to book collectors and readers. In late 1973, Abrahams was commissioned by famed New York City gallery owner Bernard Jacobson to illustrate a volume of selected tales and poems by Edgar Allan Poe. The book was to be published as a fine press, limited, signed, and numbered edition of 500 copies, with sixteen illustrations within the text, and four loose prints per volume. It took two years for Abrahams to complete the final collection of twenty prints for publication. Jacobson exhibited the prints in 1976, and announced the impending publication of the book at the show's opening.

Ivor Abrahams.
The Raven.
Print on Paper From The E.A. Poe Series, 1976.

Abrahams had admired Poe's writings since he was a teenager. For the fine press book, he chose to illustrate those stories or poems he felt he "could put an image to." Some were among Poe's most well-known works, such as The Raven. Others were much more obscure, and he commented that he "had a difficult time finding a truly complete edition of Poe's writings." The edition he finally worked from was the three-volume Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Thomas Ollive Mabbott. (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969-1978.)

Ivor Abrahams.
A Dream Within A Dream.
Print on Paper From The E.A. Poe Series, 1976.

Noted British art-historian Norbert Lynton created an extended essay on Abrahams' illustrations intended as a preface for the book. In it he wrote, "I suspect that Poe's popularity through text, illustrations and films is part of his attraction for Abrahams. Yet, unlike all the films and most of the illustrations, his images show little desire to profit from the more thrilling aspects of Poe... Abrahams un-Hollywoods Poe but uses some of Hollywood's tricks to do so. His other means are astonishingly un-period, un-hagiographic, ahistorical - in short, devoid of nostalgia. He is a plastic artist, a sculptor whose primary means of expression are form and interval. His images show a marked response to the constructive artist in Poe and much less attachment to the incidents that others focused on."

Ivor Abrahams.
Ligeia .
Print on Paper From The E.A. Poe Series, 1976.

In what can only be seen as a tremendous missed opportunity, the planned limited edition of the works of Poe as illustrated by Abrahams was never published due to logistical and financial difficulties. A portfolio of the prints was produced, and it contained a few excerpts from Lynton's essay. In what seems to be the finally indignity related to the project, the manuscript of Norbert Lynton's essay has been lost, so only the brief passages of it included in the portfolio remain.

Ivor Abrahams.
The Conqueror Worm.
Print on Paper From The E.A. Poe Series, 1976.

Ivor Abrahams: Mystery and Imagination,The ‘Edgar Allan Poe’ and ‘Edmund Burke’ Print Portfolios, continues through May 22, 2011 at the Tennant Gallery of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Ivor Abrahams.
Silence, A Fable.
Print on Paper From The E.A. Poe Series, 1976.

Specifics of the published Poe portfolio:

Abrahams, Ivor.
E.A. Poe: Tales and Poems.
New York: Bernard Jacobson Ltd., 1976.
Portfolio of twenty screenprints, some with embossing and/or varnish, various sizes, on wove Crisbrook paper 495 × 362 (19 1/2 × 14 1/4); printed by Bernard Culls at Advanced Graphics and published by Bernard Jacobson Ltd in an edition of 100 plus 10 sets of artist's proofs, each inscribed ‘Ivor Abrahams 76’ below image...each stamped with the printer's stamp ‘ADVANCED GRAPHICS LONDON’ in circular device.

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Children's Book Illustrators Take The First Exit To Brooklyn

By Nancy Mattoon

Never Take A Goat To The Library.
Illustration From:
Never take a shark to the dentist : (and other things not to do) ;
by Judi Barrett with art by John Nickle.
New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2008
(All Images Courtesy Of Brooklyn Public Library.)

"Brooklyn's diverse, vibrant environment is home to the most remarkable concentration of children's book professionals on the planet," proclaims the slightly biased website of Brooklyn Public Library (BPL). But the Library gets some backing from an independent Facebook page called Brooklyn Children's Book Authors. This page boasts: "It has become clear that if you write children's books and you live in NYC you are eventually going to move to Brooklyn."

The Eraserheads;
by Kate Banks; pictures by Boris Kulikov.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010.

If you're still not convinced that Brooklyn is the Mecca of writers for the younger set, check out Drawn In Brooklyn, an exhibition sponsored by BPL featuring original children's book illustrations by 34 artists who call New York City's most populous borough home. The exhibit was curated by Brooklynite John Bemelmans Marciano, grandson of of Ludwig Bemelmans, the famed creator of Madeline. Marciano began his career in children's literature by completing and illustrating one of his grandfather's unfinished manuscripts.

Madeline Loves Animals;
by John Bemelmans Marciano;
[based on the characters created by Ludwig Bemelmans]
New York: Viking, c2005.

BPL invited Marciano to create an exhibit made up of his own art, but he offered to present what he considered the pride of the Brooklyn book world instead. After working as both an author and an illustrator, Marciano discovered, "Writing children’s books isn’t so hard. It’s the illustrating that keeps you up for months on end." Despite this, he believes illustrators rarely get the respect they deserve. "Illustrators are the stepchildren of two industries: not taken seriously by the fine artist or gallery community and not part of the publishing world, which is so focused on the writing. His goal in creating Drawn In Brooklyn was "to bring attention to the artists."

My Chinatown: One Year In Poems;
[written and illustrated by] Kam Mak.
New York: Harper Collins, c2002.

The show he curated is more than just a gallery of amazingly varied picture book art. It also includes installations created by the illustrators containing sketches, models, tools and other objects which reveal the process behind the making of picture book art. The illustrators also gave brief interviews detailing the often surprising inspirations behind their work.

Big Red Lollipop by Rukhsana Khan;
Illustrated by Sophie Blackall.
New York, NY: Viking, 2010.

For example, Australian transplant Sophie Blackall became intrigued by "old scrapbooks from Victorian times though the 1950s...made of ephemera of little stories from people's lives." Her collage-like work incorporates Victorian trade cards, Indian sweet wrappers, industrial diagrams, faded wallpaper, microscope slides, and turn-of-the-century comic strips.

I'm Your Peanut Butter Big Brother;
[written and illustrated by] Selina Alko.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, c2009

By contrast, illustrator Selina Alko says, "Most of my work is autobiographical in some way. My Subway Ride and My Taxi Ride show my passion for New York. My work remains fresh thanks to my marriage to illustrator Sean Qualls, his emotionally textured work, and our cultural differences. I'm Your Peanut Butter Big Brother is about our children's blended heritage.

Chowder;
[written and illustrated by] Peter Brown
New York: Little, Brown, c2006

Peter Brown's work is influenced by the contrast between the country and the city. "One of my favorite childhood activities was simply sitting on the log that stretched across my favorite babbling brook and observing the forested landscape near my home. Since then, I've lived in Los Angeles, London and New York City, and I've discovered my love of urban landscapes. My fascination with those very different environments has inspired me to tell stories of seemingly opposite things coming together in surprising, funny and beautiful ways. "

Bad news for outlaws : the remarkable life of Bass Reeves, deputy U.S. marshal;
by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson; illustrations by Gregory Christie.
Minneapolis: Carolrhoda Books, c2009.

And R. Gregory Christie has always felt compelled to express himself through images, "I began painting when I was 13, drawing even before I could speak. My art has naturally taken a leading role in my life, serving as an outlet for my emotions. I feel that a painting is only half done until it's viewed by others; it is a 'conversation' between the creator and viewer. Not an audible word needs to be uttered during this exchange, but in order for there to be a learning process or appreciation of an image, the two participants must speak the same visual language."

Skit-scat Raggedy Cat : Ella Fitzgerald;
Written by Roxane Orgill; illustrated by Sean Qualls.
Somerville: Candlewick Press, 2010.

Brooklyn Public Library Exhibitions Manager Barbara Wing takes great pride in giving a showcase to the "many talented and well known illustrators who reside in this great borough of Brooklyn." The exhibit is at Brooklyn's main branch, but curator John Bemelmans Marciano says, "All of the books have been ordered not only at the central library...but in all of the branches, so many of the illustrator's of the favorite books... will be available to take home." The show continues through January of 2011.

Take A Peake At The Twentieth Century's Optimum Alice

Mervyn Peake's 20th Century Update Of Alice.

(All Images Courtesy Of The Estate Of Mervyn Peake and The British Library.)

Is there anything more difficult for an artist than to reinvent, or even try to improve upon, a classic? Sensible creative types (and that's not necessarily an oxymoron) know better than to risk it. Daredevils who choose to attempt it will turn tail and run after watching one shockingly bad example: Gus Van Sant's inexplicable shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

But every once in a while a unique talent with a fresh point of view really can make something old new again. Such an artist strikes the perfect balance between reverence for his source and relevance to his audience. A new exhibit at Yorkshire's Sheffield University Library displays 22 pen and ink drawings and 5 rough sketches which prove that tweaking the traditional can, very rarely, result in a modern masterpiece.

Peake's Rough Sketch Of Alice
Graduating From Pawn To Queen.

The exhibit, Mervyn Peake's Alice, is one of the first to feature material from an archive acquired by the British Library in April of 2010. Author, illustrator, painter, and poet Mervyn Peake is perhaps best known as the creator of the three-volume Gothic-Fantasy tour-de-force, Gormenghast. But Peake also illustrated the work of authors he admired, such as Charles Dickens, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Louis Stevenson, and, of course, Lewis Carroll. A complete set of his original pen and ink drawings for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was part of the voluminous collection of letters, manuscripts, notebooks, sketches, and typescripts, obtained by the library from the Mervyn Peake Estate.

Alice Meets
Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Peake was already a successful painter when he was asked to illustrate Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem, The Hunting of the Snark in 1941. As a student of fine art, he turned to the masterworks of other illustrators, including Hogarth, Cruickshank, Durer, Blake, Dore, Goya, to perfect his own technique. Peake's illustrative style is noted for its fluid lines, subtle plays of light and shadow, and exacting use of stippling and cross-hatching. There is nothing hackneyed , broad, or leaden in his work. And as a writer himself, he maintained complete respect for the text he had agreed to enhance. The illustrator, he said, should "subordinate [himself] totally to the book, and slide into another man's soul."

Tenniel's Alice Goes Through The Looking Glass.

When he set out to illustrate Alice's Adventures In Wonderland in 1945, Peake knew he had more to deal with than embellishing Lewis Carroll's prose. John Tenniel's wood-cut illustrations for the 1865 first edition of the book were created in close concert with the author. They were so integral to the text that all 2,000 copies of the first printing were recalled when Tenniel found their reproduction of his illustrations to be of inferior quality. A second print run was ordered, and the book became an instant best-seller. Peake was well aware that Tenniel's work was inextricable from Carroll's text for many readers: "He is inviolate, for he is embedded in the very fabric of childhood memories."

Peake's Alice Goes Through
The Mirror Crack'd.

But Peake had tremendous faith in his artistic talent. He was willing to gamble that his 20th century painter's eye could bring a fresh perspective to Carroll's Victorian text. Tenniel's view of Alice was colored by the manners and morals of his age, and by his background as a cartoonist. He was a master of the style of illustration favored by the 19th century upper crust, and his conservative political cartoons were a regular feature in Punch. His Alice is quite a proper, if unusually adventurous, young lady. Peake's Alice is very much a creation of the 20th century.

Peake's Rough Sketch
Of The Queen Of Hearts.

Mervyn Peake's artistic vision was shaped by his exposure to three distinct cultures. He grew up in a walled compound built for English missionaries in pre-revolutionary China. As a young man he returned to England, in the twilight of the empire between the two world wars. Finally, he was a post-war artist, acting as an illustrator for journalists documenting conditions in battle-scarred Europe. One of Peake's first post-war assignments was a 1945 stint in Germany. Here he witnessed first hand the bombed-out rubble which was all that remained of what had been the city of Bonn. As Peake observed in a letter to his wife: "Terrible as the bombing of London was, it is absolutely nothing – nothing compared with this unutterable desolation." But there was worse to come as he continued his travels through the ruined nation.

Mervyn Peake Sketches
Amidst The Ruins Of Germany. (1945)

In a heart wrenching letter home, Peake wrote of the Cologne Cathedral, the lone building left standing in a sea of wreckage and debris: "Bonn was nothing to Cologne from the point of view of destruction. It is incredible how the cathedral has remained, lifting itself high into the air so gloriously, while around it the city lies broken to pieces, and in the city I smelt for the first time in my life the sweet, pungent, musty smell of death. It is still in the air, thick, sweet, rotten and penetrating… But the cathedral arises like a dream – something quite new to me as an experience – a tall poem of stone with sudden, inspired flair of the lyric and yet with the staying power, mammoth qualities and abundance of the epic. Before it and beside me stood a German soldier, still in his war-worn, greeny-coloured uniform. His face betrayed nothing. Cologne lay about him like a shattered life – a memory torn out."

The Comsumptive, Belsen 1945.

But a final memory from Germany haunted Peake most of all. He was one of the first civilians to enter the just liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. His harrowing sketches of the victims who survived unimaginable horrors there are the human equivalent of the Cologne Cathedral. They are the last bastion of humanity left standing in a hell on earth where men, women, and children were routinely and relentlessly murdered; reduced to anonymous corpses dumped in mass graves, or incinerated into piles of ash. Like the cathedral, the survivors of this ultimate evil "arise like a dream" from a human wasteland rank with the "thick, sweet, rotten and penetrating" smell of death.

Peake's White Rabbit
In His Nightmarish Wonderland.

Peake's experiences in post-war Germany, along with witnessing the fall of the Imperial China as a child and the decline of the British Empire as an adult, had a profound effect on his art. This shows most notably in his own dark creations, but is no less omnipresent in his illustrations for the works of other authors. It is readily seen in the Alice In Wonderland illustrations now on show in Sheffield. Peake's Alice is a dewy-eyed gamine set adrift in a very dark and dangerous Wonderland.

The Duchess And Her Baby:
Two Of Wonderland's Grotesques.

Unlike Tenniel's Victorian lass, with a moral compass forever set to return her to the true North of proper society, Peake's Alice seems far more capable of succumbing to the topsy-turvy, dog-eat-dog anarchy that reigns in Wonderland. The reader feels a genuine fear for her safety in a sea filled with monstrous grotesques, where she may or may not be able to keep her head above water--or even attached to her shoulders. Mervyn Peake's Alice both enriches Carroll's text, and illuminates it in a way impossible for a 19th century artist. This Alice starts out as a naive English rose, but her exposure to the winds of Wonderland teaches her the necessity of growing thorns. She's a survivor of a trip to the netherworld, one of the lucky few who make it out alive but lose their innocence and illusions in the process. She returns from Wonderland a wised-up, clued-in sophisticate--impossible for a straitlaced gentleman like Tenniel to imagine, much less depict.

The Mad Tea Party:
Fiddling While Wonderland Burns.

Mervyn Peake was praised by Graham Greene as "the first artist since Tenniel to recast Alice in a contemporary mould." Later acclaimed author Will Self remarked that Peake's version of Carroll's fantasy world was "as valid a depiction of Wonderland as Tenniel's, and arguably the best one achieved since his." Peake's son Sebastian, who opened the exhibition and manages the Peake Estate, including two excellent official websites, said: "I'm sure that had my father been alive he would have been delighted to see his illustrations to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland displayed in such glorious surroundings. With ample space for each drawing to be seen as a separate work within the collection, each of the characters depicted can come to life, reminding the viewer that the basis of any interpretation is vision."

Readers are invited to examine Mervyn Peake's work in person at Sheffield University Library or online at the British Library, and to contemplate what the finest 21st Century artist's vision of Wonderland might look like.

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Previously On Booktryst:
200 Rabbit Holes Await At Canadian Library
Peake Archive Takes British Library To New Heights