Grimm Stuff

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The Grimm Brothers
and their illustrators

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Jacob (1785-1863) and
Wilhelm (1786-1859) Grimm

The over 200 stories we now know as Grimm’s Fairy Tales were first published in Berlin in 1812 (Kinder- und Hausmārchen) and in English translation in 1823, with pictures by the leading English illustrator of the day, George Cruikshank. Others had been taking an interest in traditional tales, but the Grimm brothers were reputed to be the first to write the tales down without improvement, just as the people told them. Later research indicates that, while the brothers fostered this impression, they probably extensively re-shaped the language if not the plots. The Grimms were also the first to realise that the identity of the person who recounted the tale was of interest, too. Their work inspired serious collecting of folk and fairy tales in Britain and around the world and laid the foundations for the scientific study of folklore and folk literature.

Since their first publication, their stories have attracted the leading illustrators of each generation to make their own visual interpretations of at least the most popular tales.

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Above

Cover of The story of the three little pigs
With drawings by L. Leslie Brooke
London ; New York : F. Warne, [1904]
Dorothy Neal White Collection

Illustrations from "Red Riding Hood" and "The goose girl" in
Once upon a time: the fairy-tale world of Arthur Rackham
London : Heinemann, 1972
National Children’s Collection

and

Grimm’s fairy tales : twenty stories
Illustrated by Arthur Rackham
London : Heinemann, 1973
National Children’s Collection

Illustration from "Rumpelstiltskin" in Grimm’s folk tales
Translated by Eleanor Quarrie ; with engravings by George Cruikshank
London : Folio Society, 1965, c1949
National Children’s Collection

Illustration from "Snow White" in Household tales
Illustrated by Mervyn Peake
London : Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1946
National Children’s Collection

Leonard Leslie Brooke  1862-1940

Brooke, together with Beatrix Potter and J. A. Shepherd, was considered one of the leading animal illustrators of his generation. He characteristically drew his animals clothed, standing upright, with an unmistakable twinkle in their eyes and an appearance of sly humour. Although the three pigs on the cover of his 1904 edition of the story are unclothed, they are otherwise representative of his style.

Arthur Rackham  1867–1939

Rackham was influenced by the early Victorian fairyland images of George Cruikshank and Richard Doyle. His images are romantically moody, with a muted colour range, but with sharp, naturalistically observed detail rendered in a wiry fluent line. He was the premier illustrator of the early twentieth century, from about 1900 to 1920. Rackham was to influence a generation of children and artists. His only serious rival as a fairy story illustrator was Edmund Dulac.

Rackham seems to have had an innate understanding of the power of myth and fable and an awareness of the darker side of fantasy. Children relished the thrills engendered by his forests of looming, frightening trees with grasping roots and his ogres and trolls that were ugly enough to repulse but without being too frightening. And they were drawn to his sensuous but chaste fairy maidens. His backgrounds rewarded close inspection, the observant reader discovering images of animated animals or trees.

George Cruikshank  1792-1878

Cruikshank’s early career was as a satirist and caricaturist. In 1820 he apparently received a royal bribe of £100 for a pledge "not to caricature His Majesty [George III] in any immoral situation"! He is, perhaps, most famous as the first illustrator for Charles Dickens (Sketches by Boz and Oliver Twist).

Cruikshank was prolific - it is estimated that he illustrated more than 850 books – and is credited with being one of the first artists to provide humorous, spirited illustrations in books for children. Cruikshank's etchings for the Grimm’s stories became such classics that John Ruskin was later to refer to them as the finest etchings done since Rembrandt. Part of their appeal is that he provides detailed realistic settings for the fantastical characters and events in the fairy tales.

Mervyn Peake  1911-1968

Peake, a China-born English writer, artist poet and illustrator, is best known for his Gormengast novels. He began his illustrating career when asked to illustrate Lewis Carroll’s The hunting of the Snark in 1941. He studied drawings by notable illustrators, including Hogarth, Cruikshank, Durer, and Doré. His illustrations display a strong instinct for the darkly humorous, macabre and grotesque and often capture intense emotion.

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Above

Illustration from "Fitcher’s bird" in Popular folk tales
Newly translated [from the German] by Brian Alderson ; illustrated by Michael Foreman
London : Gollancz, 1978
National Children’s Collection

Pages from "The mouse, the bird and the sausage" in
Household stories: from the collection of the Bros. Grimm
Translated from the German by Lucy Crane ; and done into pictures by Walter Crane
New York : Dover Publications, [1963]
National Children’s Collection

Frontispiece and Title page of Tales from Grimm
Freely translated and illustrated by Wanda Gag
London : Faber, 1937
Dorothy Neal White Collection

Illustration from "Hansel and Gretel" in The juniper tree, and other tales from Grimm
Selected by Lore Segal and Maurice Sendak ; translated by Lore Segal, with four tales translated by Randall Jarrell ; pictures by Maurice Sendak.
London : Bodley Head, 1974
National Children’s Collection

Michael Foreman  b.1938

Foreman’s work is distinctive, making use of space and gently graded, luminous colour washes to create both mood and mystery. His early picture books – Dinosaurs and all that rubbish (1972) and War and peas (1974) explored social and political ideas. In A history of children’s book illustration (1988), Joyce Whalley and Irene Chester wrote: “His illustrations for Hans Andersen: his classic fairy tales (1976) and The Brothers Grimm: popular folk tales (1978), reveal a penchant for the grotesque, freakish and subliminal, that overwhelms the stories’ other qualities, and his unusual compositions, full of sexual and psychological symbolism, are not in harmony with the flavour of either Andersen or Grimm.” I disagree - I think he captures the true spirit of Grimm.

Walter Crane 1845-1915

Crane’s creative approach to page design was evident throughout his work and he was one of the first illustrators to acknowledge the visual unity of the double page spread. Under the influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Crane became the pre-eminent decorative book illustrator, concerned with the beauty of the design of the individual illustration, not only in its own right, but also in relation to the whole book. His signature – a crane rebus – has a charm all its own.

Wanda Gag  1893-1946

When she was 17, Gag wrote in her diary “My Own Motto—Draw to Live and Live to Draw.” She used her artistic skill to support her family after her father’s early death and during her mother’s prolonged illness. This American artist has been credited with being the first to use the double-page spread, where the image flows across two pages, in her picture book Millions of cats (1928). Some of her books were produced using lithographs and her distinctive black and white illustrations have a folk quality that is particularly appropriate for traditional tales.

Maurice Sendak  b.1928

In a link with Kay Nielsen, who worked on creating the film, Sendak was inspired to become an illustrator when he saw Walt Disney’s Fantasia at the age of twelve.

Sendak is best known for his picture book Where the wild things are (1963). Despite the book winning the Caldecott Medal (the top US award for children’s book illustration) in 1964, the depictions of fanged monsters concerned parents when the book was first released, as they feared their grotesque appearance would give children nightmares. Sendak’s view was that through fantasy children receive catharsis for their otherwise ungovernable feelings.

In 1970 Sendak won the Hans Christian Andersen Award for children's book illustration. He has illustrated over 90 books. Sendak’s illustrations for traditional tales convery a sense of menace often absent in other versions of the stories. The influence of Albrecht Durer is evident in this tightly-framed black and white drawing. The perspective and scale of the figures in relation to the frame increases their emothional intensity as they seem to invade the viewer’s space.