London: 1907. A pen ink and watercolor, 9 x 6 inches; 228 x 15 mm. Signed in the lower right-hand corner “A. Rackham”. Matted, framed and glazed.

This original drawing by the beloved illustrator Arthur Rackham (1867–1939) depicts witches, ghouls, and goblins, along with other creepy characters set before a mountainous background. First published as a black and white drawing in the 1898 edition of The Ingoldsby Legends (pg. 465), this image was reworked, colored, and used as one of the 24 color plates in the 1907 edition of that book where it accompanied the tale of The Lay of St Aloys, A Legend of Blois (pgs. 391-401). "Rackham had recently developed his gift for drawing witches, gnomes, fairies, and anthropomorphized trees and brought them to a pitch of vivid characterization, sometimes with an unsettling frisson of horror" clearly visible in this pen, ink and watercolor (ODNB). Here Rackham's talent for the menacing and fantastical is on full display.

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. Fine (Item #6394)