Arthur Rackham: Post-WWI Years

"Becuma of the White Skin" from Irish Fairy Tales
illustrated by Arthur Rackham

"During the immediate post-war years several old successes, notably 'Grimm's Fairy Tales' were revived in separate new editions. Arthur Rackham for the first time allowed himself to be tempted into the commercial field by a highly lucrative offer for a series of advertisements from Colgate’s in 1922–23–24. An advertisement for Eno’s Fruit Salts (1928), a chocolate-box cover for Cadbury’s (1933), and covers for book catalogues in the ’thirties represented almost his only other incursions into a sphere that little appealed to his sensibility. He appeared more appropriately, in miniature, in Volume I of 'The Book of the Queen’s Dolls’ House' (1924). And in 1927 Queen Mary bought an illustration of 'King Arthur', ‘The Holy Grail’, from the R.W.S. Summer Exhibition.

​Rackham’s work had long had its supporters at the Royal Academy (‘I have a great admiration for it personally,’ Sir Edward Poynter, P.R.A., had told him in 1916 when urging him to contribute to a special exhibition for the Red Cross). In 1922 he allowed Sir Herbert Hughes-Stanton to put him down for election as an ‘Associate Engraver’, but, not surprisingly, he lost the ballot to that great engraver H. Macbeth-Raeburn by 26 votes to 11. ‘Draughtsmen’, as such, were not then admissible as Associates of the Academy. Rackham’s candidature may have done something to settle the question of their eligibility for the engraving section, but the rules were not changed until after Rackham’s death, and Edward Bawden is still (1960) the only ‘draughtsman’ so elected.

There is no reason to suppose that Rackham was disturbed by this reverse. Apparently he did retain to the end of his life the lingering remnant of a frustrated youthful ambition to succeed as a painter in oils; but he had realized when he embarked on his career as an illustrator that he would be unlikely to attain the formal honours of the Academy. As compensation he had enjoyed fame, prosperity and the affection of a very wide circle of admirers, young and old."

To be continued

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