Arthur Rackham's Midsummer Night's Dream

         This illustration from A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one from Arthur Rackham’s mature style, while he was at his prime. He drew the artwork with a sinuous ink pen, softened with muted watercolor. He draws fairies and elves with a sense of humor, mixing ugly traits of long noses and boney fingers with delicate wings and ruffled sleeves. They are impish and devilish, but talented and gentle. Here, one fairy is conducting, while others play the cello and drums. With a wry sense of humor, Rackham draws another fairy struggling to hold up the very large conductor’s book.
         At the feet of the fairies, listening to the music are several child-like women. The young women he draws beautiful and sensous, but small breasted and chaste.
         Arthur Rackham, was born in 1867 into a Victorian age that he perpetuated and documented by way of his art. He was one of twelve children. He began his early life as a clerk in London, illustrating on the side. In 1892, he left his clerical position for the uncertain career as an illustrator. Rackham developed his artistic style over the next decade and became more and more associated with fantasy art. His first major book of fifty illustrations, was for Rip Van Winkle in 1905.
         Rackam’s art was always one of joy and wonderment. From Queen Victoria's death in 1901 to the start of World War I, Rackham's illustrations preserved a lifestyle and a sensibility that kept the frighteningly modern future at bay. His beautiful drawings were the antithesis of the industrial advances that allowed them to be printed at affordable prices. Even into the twenties and thirties, his art was a constant reminder of those aspects of innocence that had been left behind. Rackham died in 1939.
         During his lifetime, Rackham illustrated Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream in three different editions: The Heinemann (London)/Doubleday(NY) edition of 1908 with 40 to 50 full color plates, the 1929 edition commissioned by the NY Public Library (and the originals can be still viewed there) with approximately 12 color plates, not published until 1977 by Abaris Books and the Limited Edition Book Club edition of 1939. There is also an edition illustrated by W. Heath Robinson in 1914 published by Henry Holt& Co in the US with abundant illustrations.