Undine (Signed limited edition). William Heinemann
- SIGNED
- London & New York: William Heinemann/Doubleday, 1909
London & New York: William Heinemann/Doubleday, 1909. Deluxe edition. Near Fine. Number 893 of 1000 copies, signed and numbered by Rackham. With 15 color plates on heavy brown paper, and black and white illustrations throughout, retaining half-title. Rebound in red calf with decorated spine compartments and gilt title on blue leather, red marbled endpapers. Top-edge of text block gilt with rest of edges uncut. Some scratches to front and back boards, offsetting to half-title and last text page (136), and all pages facing the brown paper plates, otherwise interior bright and clean.
Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's novella Undine (1811), is a German reimagining Paracelsus's sixteenth-century alchemical folklore, in which a water nymph hopes to gain a spirit by marrying a human knight, but their romance has tragic consequences. "With the aqueous world of Undine Rackham found an opportunity to revive and develop his earlier art nouveau linear decorative drawing. Especially in the need to incorporate waves and water currents in his pictures. He was thus able to connect a felicitous quality of decoration into his plates, was well as a new feeling for flat pattern which harks back to fin de siècle without being too openly mannered" (Gettings). "Although the waves and eddies of Undine bear the mark of Art Nouveau, the work was still another step forward for Rackham, the unity of conception in the line drawings and the colour plates, the assertion of contrast in the moods of the heroine, rendering it a masterpiece of sympathetic understanding" (Hudson).
Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) is perhaps the most acclaimed and influential illustrator of the Golden Age of Illustration. A prolific artist even from his youth, Rackham got his start as an illustrator working for the Westminster Budget Newspaper (1892). Over the next few years, he took on more and more commissions for children’s books, hitting his career high in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Rackham turned his imaginative pen to every classic—from Shakespeare to Dickens to Poe.
Rial 93. Near Fine.
Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's novella Undine (1811), is a German reimagining Paracelsus's sixteenth-century alchemical folklore, in which a water nymph hopes to gain a spirit by marrying a human knight, but their romance has tragic consequences. "With the aqueous world of Undine Rackham found an opportunity to revive and develop his earlier art nouveau linear decorative drawing. Especially in the need to incorporate waves and water currents in his pictures. He was thus able to connect a felicitous quality of decoration into his plates, was well as a new feeling for flat pattern which harks back to fin de siècle without being too openly mannered" (Gettings). "Although the waves and eddies of Undine bear the mark of Art Nouveau, the work was still another step forward for Rackham, the unity of conception in the line drawings and the colour plates, the assertion of contrast in the moods of the heroine, rendering it a masterpiece of sympathetic understanding" (Hudson).
Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) is perhaps the most acclaimed and influential illustrator of the Golden Age of Illustration. A prolific artist even from his youth, Rackham got his start as an illustrator working for the Westminster Budget Newspaper (1892). Over the next few years, he took on more and more commissions for children’s books, hitting his career high in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Rackham turned his imaginative pen to every classic—from Shakespeare to Dickens to Poe.
Rial 93. Near Fine.