Drawing after work
Born in London in 1867, Rackham enrolled at the Lambeth School of Art while earning his living at the Westminster Fire Office. He moved into newspaper illustration at the Westminster Budget. Drawing for the press taught him how much information a line could carry when reduced and reproduced on a printed page.
His illustrations for the Brothers Grimm in 1900 and Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle in 1905 established a market for his illustrated books. Publishers could issue a story in an elaborate gift edition, and Rackham could exhibit the original drawings separately. The surviving proofs and printer’s block in the Harry Ransom Center show stages between the drawing on his desk and the plate a purchaser took home.
A London park after closing time
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens appeared in 1906. Rackham gave Barrie’s birds, fairies and infant fugitive a habitat readers could actually visit. In the pictures of Peter and Solomon Caw, the size of an ordinary bird helps establish the scale of Peter’s new existence. Rackham’s work for Undine and The Ring of the Niblung took him into different landscapes, but the tension between precise observation and an improbable encounter remained.
