Folktale Illustration Addendum

Last Friday’s Folktale Phylogeny offered two folktale illustrations that were well received. Today’s addendum features several more with brief notes taken primarily from Wikipedia.

The "Little Red Riding Hood" illustration I used last Friday was one of the 41 engravings by Gustave Doré from Les Contes de Perrault, the 1867 edition of Charles Perrault’s fairy tales. Doré (1832-1883) was a French artist, engraver, illustrator and sculptor, who worked primarily with wood engraving. Here are two more of the 41.

Gustave Doré illustration for “The Little Thumb”
(Tom Thumb), from Les Contes de Perrault, 1867.
(multiple websites)

Gustave Doré illustration for “Cinderella,” from Les
Contes de Perrault, 1867. (multiple websites)

Joseph Alexander Adams (1803-1880) was an American engraver, who was also noted for his advances in electrotyping. His body of work includes 1600 illustrations for the Harper’s Illuminated Bible, published in parts from 1843 to 1846. Many of the illustrations were made from woodcuts by the electrotype process, the first in America.

John A. Adams illustration for “Sleeping Beauty” from
The Fairy Book, 1836. (books.google.com/books)

The English artist Walter Crane (1845–1915) was considered to be the most influential and among the most prolific children’s book creators of his generation.

Walter Crane illustration for “Rapunzel” from
Household Stories from the Collection of
the Brothers Grimm, 1882. (multiple websites)

Arthur Rackham (1867–1939) was one of the leading illustrators from the Golden Age of British book illustration, which ran from 1900 until the start of the 1st World War, 1914. He developed his own technique: sketch an outline of his drawing, lightly block in shapes and details, add lines in pen and ink, then remove the pencil traces. For color illustrations, he would then apply multiple washes of color to create translucent tints.

Arthur Rackham illustration for “Snow White” from
Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, 1909.
(multiple websites)

Arthur Rackham illustration for “Red Riding Hood”
from Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, 1911.
(ucsdspecialcollections.tumblr.com)

My source for the illustration for “Hansel and Gretel” was wrongly attributed to Henry Altemus, which was the name of the Philadelphia publishing company, 1842 to 1936. That company’s Young People’s Library, which included Grimm’s Fairy Tales, was one of its most popular series. The website dedicated to the company and its books, www.henryaltemus.com, does not identify an illustrator for the book.

Illustration for “Hansel and Gretel” from the American edition
 of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Henry Altemus Company, 1898.
(gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=File:Hansel-gretel.jpg)