Artistic Influences: Dulac, Rackham, and all the mermaids

There are two other fairy tale illustrators from the "Golden Age of Book Illustration" whose work influenced me as a child. Though Kay Nielsen was probably my favorite (see August 20 post), I also greatly admired the work of Edmund Dulac and Aurthur Rackham. These illustratiors used mainly watercolor or gouache, which, now that I think about it, may be why I prefer watercolor to other painting media. I love the clarity and transparency of the colors; to me they seem infused with light.

"Undine Lost in the Danube" by Aurthur Rackham

I think it's important to understand the origin of this "Golden Age", and why it produced such a proliferation of great illustrators. Dulac, Nielsen, and Rackham are only three of the great number of fine illustrators whose work graced the pages of fairy tales, story books, and magazines around the turn of the century. It all had to do with technology. "Until the mid-1890s, there had been no economical method of reproducing color plates. Printing methods in those days varied from printer to printer and were most often patented - and were always being improved. The invention of the process we now call "color separation" made it possible to mass-produce color images and by 1905 they improved the process to create images that were very faithful to the originals. The only drawback was that they had to be printed on a special coated paper and therefore couldn't be bound into the book with the rest of the pages." (http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/dulac.htm)

"Brunhilde" by Aurthur Rackham

Rackham is the quintessential story book artist, and his work has perhaps been seen by more people than any other illustrator of this period. Traits of his famous style include "a sinuous pen line softened with muted water color; forests of looming, frightening trees with grasping roots; sensuous, but somehow chaste, fairy maidens; ogres and trolls ugly enough to repulse but with sufficient good nature not to frighten; backgrounds filled with little nuggets of hidden images or surprising animated animals or trees." (Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr.)

"The Mermaids had Sea Green Hair" by Aurthur Rackham

"Earth, Sea, and Sky" by Sharmon Davidson

When I saw the Rackham picture of the mermaids, I couldn't resist putting my own mermaid in here- especially since she also has green hair! I had never seen this one before, but it's a great coincidence, isn't it?

"Mermaid Sparkle" by Edmund Dulac

Dulac's sensuous, jewel-like colors are what sets his work apart. Jim Vadeboncoeur says, "Dulac, though capable of pen and ink work, was primarily a painter and used the new technology's ability to reproduce exact tones to let the color hold the shape and define the object. This is one of the effects of Dulac's timing. The color separation process was "perfected" just at the exact moment he arrived and he never had to deal with the old-fashioned necessity of an ink line bounding the color to hide misregistration."

"Stealers of Light" by Edmund Dulac

"Beauty" by Edmund Dulac

These lovely pictures revealed to me the magical power of images. If you look with an open mind and heart, they can open doors to other worlds that lie beyond our everyday lives. I am forever grateful to Nielsen, Dulac, and Rackham for opening those doors.

Artistic Influences: Kay Nielsen

Recently I was asked about my early artistic influences, so I thought I'd try to re-trace my personal path, as an obsession with one artist or style led to another. Immediately I thought of the surrealists I had studied and so admired when I was in high school and college. But one day it suddenly occurred to me that Surrealism was not my first influence at all, that my artistic sensibilities had also been informed by images I encountered much earlier in my life, a time that was buried deeper in my memory.

"Snowshoes" by Kay Nielsen

Being a child of ample imagination, I loved to read fairy tales. My fascination with these stories went beyond listening to an adult read "Red Riding Hood" or even watching Disney's iconic "Snow White" or "Sleeping Beauty"; I went to the library and checked out every book of fairy tales I could find, and devoured them.

"Pop! Out Flew the Moon" by Kay Nielsen

I was captivated as much by the pictures as the stories; the stunning illustrations in many of these books sparked an aspiration to draw like that myself. I populated my own imaginary world with knights, princesses, horses, and dragons that I drew and cut out. I would make up fantastic tales, and act them out with these 'paper doll' characters.

"A Large Flock of Birds" by Kay Nielsen

Some of the most inspiring illustrations were done by Danish artist Kay Nielsen, who worked during the Golden Age of Book Illustration in London around the turn of the century. According to Terri Windling (From Fairy Tales to Fantasia: The Art of Kay Nielsen), "Kay left Copenhagen for Paris to study art in Montparnasse. It was there that he, like so many art students, discovered Aubrey Beardsley's work, with its fine use of line and ornamentation and its aura of dark romance. Beardsley's drawings made a considerable impression on him, containing as it did two of the things he loved best: imagery from myth and folklore, and the strong influence of Japanese art."

"How Morgan Le Fay Gave a Shield to Sir Tristram" by Aubrey Beardsley

"The Sea off Satta" by Hiroshige


"The North Wind Went Over the Sea" by Kay Nielsen

I loved the drama and emotion these pictures evoked, the lush colors, the stylized figures. For me, they were an integral part of the stories, as important as the words. The strong sense of composition and use of flowing line are aspects of Nielsen's work that I unconsciously incorporated, over time, into my own work.


"Dakini" by S. Davidson


I think the function of artwork as narrative has also been an aspect of my work, and one that has come to the forefront again in my recent work.

"The Traveler's Tale: As the Crow Flies" by S. Davidson


"Then He Took Her Home" by Kay Nielsen

It's strange how these things we've forgotten about have influenced us so profoundly. Perhaps they lay so deeply and thoroughly imbedded in our past that they've become a part of us.