Illustrateurs

1904 · 3810 — London: John F. Shaw 1904. First edition. Publisher's quarter decorated cloth over full-color glazed pictorial boards corners a little worn.Small quarto 9 5/8 x 7 1/8 in; 245 x 180 mm. A few illustrations hand-colored by a child. Closed tear to bottom edge of page. 17. Early ink presentation dated "Christmas 1905" on front paste-down. Illustrated throughout in black and white and color with fifteen drawings by Louis Wain and an unrecorded text drawing by Arthur Rackham so initialed on page 40. Unrecorded and scarce with no copies noted in the Wain or Rackham bibliographies.<br /> <br /> Anytime an unrecorded book illustration by Arthur Rackham comes to light it's an item for collectors to note. Buried within this book unheralded on page forty is a black and white text illustration of four chickens in various states of distress as they observe in high dudgeon and with no little annoyance a cat within their food bucket chowing down the chicken feed. And at the lower left of the bucket as small as can be are Rackham's initials as typically drawn. Latimore and Haskell and Riall make no mention of this illustration in their Rackham bibliographies and the Arthur Rackham Society expressed no knowledge of it when we inquired. A true scarcity -- a previously unknown Rackham during his transitional period when his fairies and goblins were emerging but had not yet fully vanquished the simple pay-the-bills work of his early years.<br /> <br /> Arthur Rackham 1867-1939 is perhaps the most acclaimed and influential illustrator of the Golden Age of Illustration. A prolific artist even from his youth Rackham got his start as an illustrator working for the Westminster Budget Newspaper 1892. Over the next few years he took on more and more commissions for children's books hitting his career high in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Rackham turned his imaginative pen to every classic-from Shakespeare to Dickens to Poe.<br /> <br /> Cf. Dale 34 and 35. John F. Shaw unknown