The Peter Pan Portfolio (Signed limited edition)
- SIGNED
- London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1912
London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1912. First edition. Very Good. One of 500 copies signed by the publisher and printer on the limitation page. A Very Good copy, internally very clean and complete. Measuring 22 x 20 inches and collating complete with all twelve plates and textual tissue guards. Plates mounted on Chippendale boards hand-finished with gold frames. Bound in the publisher's half parchment over green fabric boards, retaining two of the four original silk ties. Dustsoiling to boards and some toning to endpapers. Two contemporary bookplates to upper pastedown and one early bookplate to upper free endpaper. Lacking the publisher's box.
This portfolio, with illustrations excerpted from Rackham's breakout work Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), was designed specifically to highlight the artist's craft. According to the publisher, the plate reproductions were made to be as close as possible in size to Rackham's original watercolors and were elegantly mounted so that each picture could potentially be detached and hung separately (although we are glad that the original owners chose to keep this portfolio intact).
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.
"Rackham's illustrations to Grimm, Hans Andersen or Poe show him at his most imaginative and observant of human nature, while his gnomes, fairies and gnarled anthropomorphic trees in Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens or A Midsummer Night's Dream represent his more fantastic side...He was – and remains – a soloist in front of an orchestra, a player with the responsibility to interpret and add a personal lustre to great works with variations of infinite subtlety and grace" (James Hamilton).
Riall 113. Very Good.
This portfolio, with illustrations excerpted from Rackham's breakout work Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), was designed specifically to highlight the artist's craft. According to the publisher, the plate reproductions were made to be as close as possible in size to Rackham's original watercolors and were elegantly mounted so that each picture could potentially be detached and hung separately (although we are glad that the original owners chose to keep this portfolio intact).
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.
"Rackham's illustrations to Grimm, Hans Andersen or Poe show him at his most imaginative and observant of human nature, while his gnomes, fairies and gnarled anthropomorphic trees in Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens or A Midsummer Night's Dream represent his more fantastic side...He was – and remains – a soloist in front of an orchestra, a player with the responsibility to interpret and add a personal lustre to great works with variations of infinite subtlety and grace" (James Hamilton).
Riall 113. Very Good.