constantly sketching and scribbling, and trying to give form to the
ideas with which even then his mind was filled; but
he had no systematic art education during his boyhood.
His childish
essays were mostly fantastic creations, or drawings of animals; but as a
lad in his teens he began to
take himself seriously and to have convictions about the
need for
careful study of nature. So at this period he started landscape painting
assiduously, seeking in all sincerity
to master the problems which nature presented for
solution, and
searching out unaided the facts which he felt would provide him with a
useful foundation on which to build
much later achievement.
As he grew towards manhood the opportunity came to him to acquire a more
disciplined type of training, something in which he could be guided by
the experience of men
who had a skilled knowledge of the matters with which he was
experimenting. Even then the best he could do was to attend the evening
classes at the Lambeth School of
Art – where, however, he had the advantage of being taught by a very
able master, Mr. W. Llewellyn – and to devote a portion of his time to
the work in which he desired to
excel. That this mixture of self-education and school training was of
value to him, and that it really helped him to progress in the right
direction, may be judged from the fact
that he was able at this period to figure as an exhibitor at the
Academy, the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, and other
galleries, and to rank himself among the
abler craftsmen at a comparatively early stage of his career. It was not
until 1892 that he finally gave himself up to art work and made painting
his sole profession.
|
He was born in 1867, so that by this time he had reached the age of
five-and-twenty, and was in a position to judge with a mature
mind what were his chances of success. His confidence in his powers was
certainly not misplaced, for he found immediately that
there was a demand for his work, and that there was a place in the art
world for him to fill. At first he was chiefly occupied with
drawings for reproduction, with journalistic illustrations for the "Pall
Mall" and "Westminster" Budgets, the "Graphic," the "Sketch,"
"Black and White," and other weeklies of the same order, and with more
imaginative work for books and magazines. He illustrated
the "Ingoldsby Legends," "Grimm's Fairy Tales," and a number of his
drawings were published in the children's magazine, " Little
Folks." All kinds of subjects engaged him, fairy tales and fantasies,
realistic modern life, dramatic motives drawn from fiction, and
others which offered him scope for invention and imaginative expression;
and the variety, it may well be assumed, was helpful in the
development of his art and in the widening of his professional outlook.
On the right, we show Arthur Rackham's "The Fish King and the Dog Fish" -
an illustration originally published in ''Little Folks''
magazine |
.jpg) |
Meanwhile he was steadily advancing in his command over the practical
details of his art. He was becoming a draughtsman of remarkable power
and an eminently
accomplished watercolourist, a painter, indeed, with much more than
ordinary skill. So satisfactory was his development that in 1902 he was
able to secure admission
to the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours on the first occasion
that he offered himself. This prompt recognition of his claims deserves
to be recorded, because it
is no uncommon thing for artists of distinction to have to make a
succession of attempts to satisfy the Society of their fitness for
election. That the doors should have
been opened to him at once is evidence enough that he was regarded then
as a specially desirable Associate, and that the members thought his
contributions likely to
increase appreciably the attractiveness and interest of the Society's
exhibitions. No one who has seen the drawings by which he has since been
represented in the
gallery in Pall Mall would feel disposed to question the correctness of
this opinion. He has given to the shows some very novel features, and he
has taken in the Society
an absolutely unique position; there is certainly no one else among the
supporters of this catholic and energetic association who approaches him
in that form of pictorial
expression which he has made so emphatically his own, and there are few
who can be said to rival him in thoroughness and completeness of
craftsmanship. Indeed,
there is no harm in repeating what has already been stated, that neither
among present-day artists nor among those who have passed away is there
anyone who is quite
comparable with him.
Perhaps the nearest to him was Richard Doyle, but Mr. Rackham surpasses
even that master of fanciful contrivance in
the richness and strength of his work, He has
undeniably an
extraordinary imagination, extraordinary in its intricacy, in its
unfailing resource, and its endless variety. Mere grotesque extravagance
does not by any
means satisfy him; there is
much more in his art than simple twisting of facts into absurdities, or
than the travestying of serious things in a broadly
humorous manner.
Such an example of it as The Rescue, is really an
intensely dramatic story cast in a definitely comic
mould, a drama in which all the actors are playing their parts in
deadly earnest, and with the most serious conviction.
.jpg)
Above,
we show Arthur Rackham's "The Rescue"
|
The
humour of it is grim – not so grim, perhaps, as that which distinguishes
that other amazing creation, the
Langham sketch
Alone – but in the grimness there is a charming
hint of tenderness
and of sympathy with the weaker things that suffer
under nature's inflexible code of
laws. In this drawing Mr. Rackham
appears as a moralist, and as a commentator on the
tragedies of existence; in Cupid's Alley, with its wonderful insight
into character,
he is quite as convincingly a satirist, and
in Alone he tells a complete
and tragic story in which there is a plain
and intelligible symbolical intention. In all these
fantasies
of his, with their quaint and grotesque presentation, there is
an underlying
meaning that is well worth seeking
out; to treat them simply as clever fooling would be a
serious
mistake. But when he ceases to deal with these problems
and turns to ideas
which are essentially dainty and delicate in
sentiment he loses none of his
attractiveness as an artist.
.JPG)
Above,
we show Arthur Rackham's "The Dance in Cupid's Alley"
|
His illustrations to "Grimm's Fairy Tales " (London : Constable & Co.),
The Old Man, Snowdrop, The Cat, and The Young Count; his exquisite water
colours, Playmates
and Queen Mab; even his water colour landscape The Lakeside, show a
sensitive understanding of artistic refinements which is heartily to be
commended. There is in
them all an amount of thought, and a degree of ingenuity in design, far
beyond what is to be found in the work of the average illustrator, and
there is a sympathetic touch
which is a clear reflection of his own kindly temperament. Obviously he
feels the beauty of nature quite as keenly as her strength, and is as
responsive to her charms as
to her sternness and inflexibility. To the executive side of his work,
nothing but praise can be given. Whether he is expressing himself in
colour, in black-and-white line,
inbroad masses as in the silhouette, The Wren and the Bear, or in that
combination of pen-line and tinting in colour-washes which he
particularly affects, he is always a
complete master of technical method. His practice, indeed, is as
intricate and searching as his imagination and as complex as his
invention. Everything he does is
finished like a miniature and yet is broad, decisive, and confident.
The struggle to make himself intelligible, and to keep his mind and hand
in proper relation, is never apparent in his drawings; though this
struggle is one from which no
artist can escape. He has learned with rare completeness how to control
the processes of the form of art which he has chosen, and he has
acquired that air of spontaneity
which more than anything else implies exhaustiveness of preliminary
study and long continued effort to acquire a sufficiency of mechanical
experience, and in this he has
been especially wise ; nothing would have hampered more seriously a man
of his peculiarly prolific imagination than technical imperfection.
Really, it would be possible to
use the whole Series of his drawings to illustrate a long and elaborate
argument about the importance of careful preparation to the artist who
wishes to devote himself to
imaginative painting. The realist who is satisfied to present things as
they are, to "hold the mirror up to nature" – a cant phrase which is
much misunderstood and often
misapplied – does not require anything like the same amount of
preliminary study, for he proposes to do nothing more throughout his
life than he has been accustomed to
do at school. He can always sit down before his subject and reproduce it
with all the exactness of which he is capable, and with the strictest
attention to its trivialities. There
is no necessity for him to think, no need even for him to stock his
memory with facts to draw upon in later years. As soon as he has
acquired the manual dexterity which is
expected of every passable student who has gone through the ordinary art
school course, he can blossom out as a producing artist, and can secure
admission to the
exhibitions for his records of the things which are always about him.
All that such a man has to concern himself with is the development of a
capacity to see microscopically
If he ever had any power of viewing his material largely or of
conceiving his subject as a whole, he is certain to grow more narrow in
vision as he goes on. He loses his
larger perceptions and he gains in exchange a faculty which is easier to
exercise and less likely to impose any strain upon what intellectual
powers he may chance to
possess. His one and only ambition is to produce works of art which will
be actual enough to be deceptive and which will excite the gaping wonder
of the uneducated by
their imitative exactness. When he has painted a fly which some deluded
observer tries to brush off with a handkerchief, or represented a bunch
of grapes which is so like
the real thing that it will induce the street-Arab to flatten his nose
in admiration against the shop-window in which the picture is exhibited,
he feels that he has not lived in
vain. His triumph seems to him to be assured, his ambition to be
completely satisfied.
The unfortunate thing, however, is that triumphs of this sort can be
secured so early in the career of any artist who is blessed with
sufficiently keen sight. His development
begins and ends with his school training, and all he can acquire in
later life is merely a little more manual dexterity. Before he has
reached middle age he has ceased to
be an artist and has become only a manufacturer of stock patterns, who
can turn out in any number required things which are quite according to
the samples he provided
many years before. He stops short on the threshold of art and goes no
further because his blunted susceptibilities cannot perceive that there
are any more worlds for him
to conquer. Possibly he is not unhappy, because, having no ideals he can
have no disappointments and can never fall seriously short of what he
intended: but his
happiness comes simply because he is too fossilised to experience any
sensations.
With a worker of Mr. Rackham's type the case is very different. He could
not remain a realist, for realism would destroy all the spirit and
meaning of his art. He cannot
confine himself to the facts that are before him because plain actuality
would never satisfy him and would never allow him the scope for
expression that he so intensely
desires. But he has, all the same, to go through the drilling of the
realist or else he would be incapable of expanding in the directions
where he can justify his artistic
temperament most convincingly. If he had not the basis of sure knowledge
he could never construct those delightful perversions of nature which
evidently give him such
joy and show the rare richness of his imagination. For it must be
remembered that his grotesques have to be made credible, and with all
their extravagance have to be
so dramatically suggestive that they can attract and hold the attention
of the people whose first inclination is to laugh at their absurdity.
Directly he began to fumble, or to
hint at any uncertainty in his own mind, his power to persuade would be
gone; he would seem to be attempting something beyond his reach, or to
be deliberately poking
fun at his admirers.
Such a breach of faith would be inexcusable; for if he is not serious
in his art, no matter how amusing or fantastic it may be, he stamps
himself as a charlatan who is only
attitudinising to draw notice which his merits do not entitle him to
claim. Only a consummate command over his craft would allow him to show
that his amazing departures
from strict veracity are deliberate expressions of a very original
aesthetic belief and perfectly sincere in their exaggeration. When he
turns from grotesques to purely
poetic drawings, the value of his nature study is not less apparent. The
course of landscape painting which he began in his boyhood, and has kept
up to the present day,
has had a most valuable influence upon his art. It has guided him into
exquisite suggestion of nature's subtleties, into a true appreciation of
her sentiment and tender
beauty. The landscape settings of his grotesques are as decoratively
appropriate as they are naturally charming, and have the fullest measure
of the true poetic spirit. His
landscapes with incidental figures, and his pure landscapes of the
Lakeside type, are sensitive, dainty, and well observed, distinguished
by the happiest observation of
atmospheric qualities, and by that perfect refinement which comes solely
from intimacy of understanding If he had not been so close a student, he
could never have
grasped so firmly the elusive mysteries with which nature veils herself
from the unsympathetic soul, and he could never have ranked himself so
high as her faithful and
earnest interpreter.
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