RACKHAM, Arthur, artist; ANDERSEN, Hans

Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales

[London]: , [1932]. Item #05204

"The Snow Man"

RACKHAM, Arthur. “Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales.” Original watercolor drawing for a dust jacket design for Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales (London: 1932). [N.p.: n.d., ca. 1932].

Depicts a group of four children, with a dog, dancing around a snowman, with a green picket fence in the background and a full moon against a dark blue sky. The snowman, with a rake representing his mouth, is holding a broom in his left hand and is wearing a red glove on his right hand and a green top hat with a red band. Lettered in blue at the top: “Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales,” and at the bottom: “With a Number of Illustrations by Arthur Rackham.” With green holly leaves and red berries on either side at the top and green holly leaves on either side at the bottom. Image size: 9 x 7 1/2 inches; 228 x 190 mm. Matted and framed. From the estate of Mrs. Barbara Edwards (the artist’s daughter).

A black and white drawing with a snowman and a dog appears on p. 259 of Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales, illustrating the story “The Snow Man” (pp. 256-261).

“The ideal—even the classic—late Rackham commission was Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales. Harrap sent him to Denmark for a week in November 1931 to collect Danish atmosphere for the book. [His daughter] Barbara accompanied him, and together they explored Copenhagen, Elsinor, a farm in Zeeland, and visited museums, the cinema…and the theatre…Rackham’s Danish sketchbook contains all the ‘notes & notes’ he took for dear life, studies of cottages, architectural details, courtyards, farm machinery, interiors and so on. The studies appear, as fully dressed drawings, in illustrations such as ‘We went hand in hand up the round tower,’ from The Elder Tree Mother, and ‘Kay and Gerda in the garden high up on the roof,’ from The Snow Queen” (James Hamilton, Arthur Rackham: A Life with Illustration, pp. 144-145).

Price: $12,500.00