Arthur Rackham: Hans Andersen's "Fairy Tales"

Illustration by Arthur Rackham
from "The Emperor's New Clothes"

"The undertaking that meant most to Arthur Rackham in the early ’thirties was ​his edition of Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales, a project that had been in his mind for many years. With his daughter Barbara he paid a preparatory visit to Denmark in the autumn of 1931, and while in Copenhagen met an old lady who as a child had hidden under a table in order to hear Andersen himself reading some newly written stories to a gathering of adults. Rackham sketched busily both in town and country, visiting farms and local museums. 

‘It is rather fatiguing,’ he wrote to his wife. ‘I have to talk so much & behave myself so well all the while, taking notes & notes for dear life. But everyone is most delightfully friendly & anxious to help. Of course Andersen is their great god. And all, and at the bookshop, are greatly interested in what I have to do.’

A deputation of Danes took Rackham and his daughter to visit Hans Andersen’s grave. As none of the Danes could speak English, and the Rackhams could not speak Danish, the conversation was entirely in mime. At the graveside one of the deputation startled Rackham by producing a large wreath, which he handed to him with a deferential but purposeful gesture towards the grave. While the Danes stood with bared and bowed heads, Rackham rather sheepishly laid the wreath on the grave. As he did so, he muttered to his daughter, ‘This is the sort of thing an Englishman does very badly, I’m afraid!’ ‘Amen, Amen!’ responded the Danes, and replaced their hats.

In a note to his Hans Andersen volume (1932), Rackham emphasized that he had made no attempt in his illustrations ‘to look through Danish eyes’, but he explained:

‘I think that my visit to Denmark, which, with all its modern progress, happily preserves in town and country a genial atmosphere of old dignity in comely everyday use, did give me just that nearer ​view of the author’s country that I needed – a view that helped me to realise again the sensation I felt as a child when I first read Andersen. This sensation experienced in childhood in foreign fairy tales is a foretaste of that encountering of familiar things in unfamiliar guise which later is one of the joys of foreign travel.’ 

The Observer invited Hugh Walpole to choose the best picture-book of 1932. ‘I give the prize without hesitation to Rackham’s Hans Andersen,’ Walpole replied. ‘He has risen nobly to his subject. He has acquired a new tenderness and grace. His fantasy is stronger than ever.’ Twenty-five years after its publication, the Hans Andersen had become one of the most difficult of Rackham’s books to buy second-hand."

To be continued

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