Arthur Rackham: Beginnings

"Fairy Procession" by Arthur Rackham

"It would make an unusual beginning if Arthur Rackham's biographer could state with confidence that he was descended, however remotely, from a pirate. Though this is indeed the case, Arthur Rackham was born into a typical middle-class Victorian family of the best sort. The father, himself a man of distinction, had at least three unusually distinguished sons - Arthur, Harris and Bernard. Additionally, there were nine other siblings as well.  

As a child, Arthur showed a precocious talent for drawing, and especially for fantastic subjects. Put to bed early, he smuggled paper and pencil with him and drew while the daylight lasted. When this was forbidden, he still managed to hide his pencil and draw on the pillows. A note to Arthur from his grandmother when he was nine congratulated him on a letter which was 'very nicely written' and had obviously been freely illustrated with caricatures. 'The sketches are from life I suppose,' she wrote back, 'Well, you have not made any of you very handsome!'

He entered the City of London School at the age of twelve, September 1879, and endeared himself to his masters by his humour and character, and by his precocious talent for drawing, which earned him the school prize (a portrait of himself by Herbert Dicksee, the drawing master, which seems not to have survived).

With all his high spirits, Arthur was a delicate boy, and a doctor recommended that he leave school and accompany two family friends to Australia. During the outward and homeward voyages, and during his three-month stay in Australia, he painted many creditable watercolours. Vesuvius, Capri and the Suez Canal were among his subjects, but his chef d'oeuvre was a 'Panoramic View of Sydney from Nature,' dated May 1884. He arrived back in London in July with his health entirely re-established, and the long sea voyage, with its ample opportunities for sketching, had quite decided him to be an artist.

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Arthur Rackham: His Life and Work" by Derek Hudson.)