Arthur Rackham: A Happy Marriage

"Edyth Starkie" Self-Portrait

"Arthur Rackham's wife, Edyth Starkie, with a smooth pink-and-white complexion, unlined to the end of her life, with wide-open Irish blue eyes ever full of mischief, her hair snow-white from an early age, was the antithesis of him in character. She had a charm which made everybody like her and many people love her. If she was not conventionally beautiful, she gave the impression of beauty. She made her friends laugh without ever really saying anything particularly witty, and she could give great comfort by her sympathy and understanding. Servants and tradesmen adored her. An original experimenter in interior decoration, she was keen on new ideas of all kinds, with a passion for motoring and later for the wireless. She would launch herself into daring arguments in favour of free-love or Communism – but entirely theoretically, for she herself lived the mildest and strictest of lives. ‘I rather like bad people but I can’t stand bad art’ – that phrase has seemed to her daughter to sum up exactly her attitude to life.

By the time that she met Arthur Rackham, who was two months older than herself, Edyth Starkie already knew much of the world. When she was sixteen, her mother took her on a tour of Europe. They stayed for a time in Paris, where Edyth studied art, and then went on to Germany, where she became engaged to a Prussian officer at Potsdam, causing a major scandal when she broke off the engagement. After her father’s death, she settled in Hampstead with her mother.

Arthur Rackham admired her not only as a woman but also as an artist, who was then achieving a considerable reputation as a portrait painter. Her pictures are intensely individual and sincere. They are remarkable for their deep sense of character. She was a member of the International Society; works by her were bought for the National Museum, Barcelona, where she won a gold medal in 1911, and the Luxembourg, Paris. ​Although her career was broken by ill-health, she was an artist to be remembered with honour.

It will be readily understood, then, how much Rackham owed to his wife, who was married to him at St Mark’s, Hampstead, on 16th July 1903. His alliance with this artistic Irishwoman brought out the best in Rackham; for she was always his most stimulating, severest critic, and he had the greatest respect for her opinion. In return he gave her unswerving loyalty and devotion, so that the marriage, despite its temperamental ups-and-downs, proved a very happy one."

To be continued 

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