Once Upon a Time...: A Treasury of Classic Fairy Tale Illustrations (Dover Fine Art, History of Art)

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George Bodmer, “Arthur Hughes, Walter Crane, and Maurice Sendak: The Picture as Literary Fairy Tale (...)

In contrast to the typical Disney portrayal of Rapunzel, here we can see Crane’s usual reverential treatment of his subjects. Crane’s interpretation of the fairy tales is about serious artwork for serious literature, age-old and meaningful – more than just bedtime stories. On postmodern picturebooks, see Lawrence R. Sipe and Sylvia Pantaleo (eds.), Postmodern Picturebook (...) To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the tales in 1973, exactly a decade after Where the Wild Things Are transformed Maurice Sendak from an insecure young artist into a household name, FSG invited the 45-year-old artist to illustrate a translation of the Grimm classics by novelist Lore Segal. Sendak had first envisioned the project in 1962, just as he was completing Where the Wild Things Are, but it had taken him a decade to begin drawing. He collaborated with Segal on choosing 27 of the 210 tales for this special edition, which was originally released as a glorious two-volume boxed set and was reprinted thirty years later in the single volume The Juniper Tree: And Other Tales from Grimm ( public library).

1. Wonderballs

She let her hair drop, and when her braids were at the bottom of the tower, he tied them around him, and she pulled him up. At first Rapunzel was terribly afraid, but soon the young prince pleased her so much that she agreed to see him every day and pull him up into the tower. Thus, for a while they had a merry time and enjoyed each other’s company. The fairy didn’t become aware of this until, one day, Rapunzel began talking and said to her, “Tell me, Mother Gothel, why are my clothes becoming too tight? They don’t fit me any more.” Austrian artist Lisbeth Zwerger is among the most celebrated children’s book illustrators of our time. She has lent her immeasurable talent to such classics as Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant in 1984, L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1996, and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1999. Zwerger brings her singular vision to eleven of the Grimm stories in the absolutely gorgeous volume Tales from the Brothers Grimm: Selected and Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger ( public library), published in 2012 and translated by Anthea Bell. These different types of text-picture-relationships are explained in: Maria Nikolajeva, Carole Scott, How Picturebooks Work , New York, Garland, 2001. As for current trends in picturebook research, see Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks , London, Routledge, 2018. In his timeless meditation on fantasy and the psychology of fairy tales, J.R.R. Tolkien asserted that there is no such thing as writing “for children.” The sentiment has since been echoed by generations of beloved storytellers: “Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time,” E.B. White told The Paris Review. “You have to write up, not down.” Neil Gaiman argued that protecting children from the dark does them a grave disservice. “I don’t write for children,” Maurice Sendak told Stephen Colbert in his final interview. “I write — and somebody says, ‘That’s for children!’” Home > Essays > Children’s Book Illustrators in the Golden Age of Illustration Children’s Book Illustrators in the Golden Age of Illustration Corryn Kosik

To equip his imagination with maximally appropriate raw material, Sendak even sailed to Europe before commencing work on the project, hoping to drink in the native landscapes and architecture amid which the Brothers Grimm situated their stories. Aware of the artist’s chronic poor health, legendary children’s book patron saint Ursula Nordstrom— Sendak’s editor and his greatest champion— beseeched him in a lovingly scolding letter right before he departed: “For heaven’s sake take care of yourself on this trip.” The Twelve Huntsmen The Golden Bird Many-Fur The Devil and the Three Golden Hairs Ferdinand Faithful and Ferdinand Unfaithful The Goblins In the introduction, Gág writes of her approach to these familiar stories, or Märchen, which she tells as her grandmother had told them to her over and over: On postmodern picturebooks, see Lawrence R. Sipe and Sylvia Pantaleo (eds.), Postmodern Picturebooks. Play, Parody, and Self-Referentiality , New York, Routledge, 2008; Cherie Allan, Playing with Picturebooks: Postmodernism and the Postmodernesque , Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.R.W. Lovejoy, Chapter 11, “Dangerous Pictures: Social Commentary in Europe, 1720-1860,” in History of Illustration (New York: Bloomsbury, 2018) 181. This is really where Art Passions started You will find Adrienne Segur's illustrations to The Fairy Tale book by Marie Ponsot. Walter Crane’s brother, Thomas Crane, was also known for his involvement in the decorative arts, even re-designing the faҫade of Marcus Ward & Co. where he was the Director of Design. He also contributed many designs to the field of embroidery which was very popular for women of the Victorian era, as both a hobby for gentlewomen and as a means of decorating their homes. As Susan E. Meyer states in her book A Treasury of the Great Children’s Book Illustrators, “In their cultural appetites, the Victorians displayed the same set of contradictions as they did in their moral deportment.” [12] Though they extolled the virtues of simplicity, they often decorated their homes in opulent Rococo-style decor; though they applauded the onslaught of the Industrial Revolution, they insisted on the importance of nature and purity. Although the Victorians were known for their restraint and prim demeanor, they were known for their love of scandalous railway novels, and their society also produced the ever-comical Edward Lear.