Arthur Rackham: Peter Pan

"Fairies Tiff with the Birds" from "Peter Pan"
by Arthur Rackham

"V.M. Lucas had hinted in his letter of March 1905, congratulating Arthur Rackham on the Rip Van Winkle exhibition, at J. M. Barrie's interest in his work and at the prospect of his undertaking illustrations for 'Peter Pan'. It was not intended that he should illustrate the famous play, successfully produced for the first time the previous Christmas and not published until 1928, but rather those chapters from that rambling book 'The Little White Bird' (1902) which had introduced Peter Pan to the world, though in a form very different from that in which he is seen on the stage. Rackham could have found no subject more immediately topical, or more fashionably propitious. 'Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, as he re-created it, and as it appeared from Hodder and Stoughton with fifty full-page illustrations in colour mounted on thick paper according to the taste of the time, became the outstanding Christmas gift-book of 1906 – and maintained its hold for many later Christmases. 

Rackham worked steadily on the book for the next year, making many sketches in Kensington Gardens, and then wrote to propose another meeting at which he could show the author his finished pictures. He found Barrie pre-occupied by the illness of his friend Arthur Llewelyn Davies:

‘Dear Mr. Rackham, I am so much at present with a friend who is dangerously ill that I have not seen my letters till now, so kindly excuse this delay in answering. I want so much to see the pictures, and thank you heartily for your letter. Could you come on Wednesday about six o’clock? I shall be here if this suits you. Yours sincerely, J. M. Barrie’ 

The illustrations that followed were a great success. The critics were enthusiastic in their praise. For example, the 'Pall Mall Gazette' wrote:

‘Not the least part of that good fortune that follows Mr Barrie’s steps is his choice of an illustrator. Mr Rackham seems to have dropped out of some cloud in Mr Barrie’s fairyland, sent by a special providence to make pictures in tune to his whimsical genius.’ Rackham’s friends and fellow illustrators were genuinely delighted at his success. ‘It may be that your pictures are a craze, that people have lost their heads and that the dealers are keeping the thing up – it may be!’ wrote Harry Rountree. ‘All I know is that I am as intoxicated as the worst and I am certain that this drunkenness will last for ever. … Long live Rackham!’ At the same time, it is only fair to mention that there were one or two critics who were more doubtful, who sneered at these ‘children’s books’ that were designed for the drawing-room rather than the nursery (probably true, though they were appreciated in both quarters), and who obscurely resented the luxurious pages, the tissue fly-leaves, the ‘fluttering prints each half-mounted on a sheet of brown paper in approved collector-fashion’.

Barrie himself wrote him: 'I am always your debtor, and I wish the happiest Christmas, and please, I hope you will shed glory on more of my things. Yours most sincerely, J. M. Barrie'

His achievement in the contemporary convention of illustration was a superb one; and the collectors’ demand for his books, here and in America, has shown it to be lasting."

To be continued

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