Illustratrivia

Women Illustrators of the Golden Age

Edited by Mary Carolyn Waldrep

Surrealist painter Nicoletta Ceccoli’s pieces seem to toe the line between illustration and gallery-destined art. Ceccoli, who hails from San Marino, gives her work a tinge of darkness and uneasiness to them through using gray tones to offset and tone down the candy-floss pastel colors. On her frequent use of well-recognized imagery, Ceccoli said in a 2010 interview “One finds in my work innocence and sexuality, circuses and bestiaries, women with fantastic animals, insects, fish, dragons, giant toys. These are my obsessions.”3 The pieces are heavily influenced by fairy-tale art, though they all carry elements of the bizarre. The overly large, doll-like heads of her girls can also be seen as a nod to the original Alice In Wonderland character designs.

Ceccoli, by far the youngest artist in the gallery, creates an interesting dialogue between the familiar and the strange, history and newness. Unlike many illustrators, she often makes direct visual references to many eras of art history in her work, not limiting herself to Surrealism. For example, “The Princess and the Prey,” a painting from her art-book Beautiful Nightmares, is staged like the famous and often repeated ‘Saint George and the Dragon’ image. However, by introducing elements of the illustrative tradition- common fairy-tale elements (note the name) and soft nursery-rhyme pastels- she changes the meaning, lending it an air of ridiculousness and even parody.  

3 trans. from French: “On retrouve dans mon travail de l’innocence et de la sexualité, du cirque et des bestiaires, des femmes avec des animaux fantastiques, des insectes, des poissons, des dragons, des jouets géants. Ce sont mes obsessions.” -Nicoletta Ceccoli, Interview by Elsa, Madmoizelle, October 1, 2010. http://www.madmoizelle.com/nicoletta-ceccoli-16192

It must be noted that even when drawing for younger audiences, Arthur Rackham’s art does not lose its complexity. “They Have Sea-Green Hair” is a wonderfully strange piece, depicting mermaids clinging to striated rocks as the tide goes out. Although nude, their spiky green troll-doll hair and posing (utterly ignoring the more standard sexy mermaid lounge) gives them a wild and feral look. Their unreadable expressions and the overall grayness of the piece add to the ambiguous tone.

The landscape is just as much the main focus as the mermaids. Most obvious are the striped rock formations that lend color and a warmer tone to the piece, but the subtle clear water in the tide pools is a masterful use of watercolor, and the thin streaks of navy blue in the sky are answered by the deeper ocean.

Any illustration exhibit would be incomplete without the work of English artist Arthur Rackham. Quite possibly the leading illustrator during the Golden Age of Illustration, his ink and watercolor drawings can be found in permanent collections the world over. Popular in both his own lifetime and today, his pieces can be found in a truly staggering amount of books, for a wide variety of intended readers.

“The Moon, Like to a Silver Bow New-Bent in Heaven,” from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights Dream, appears nearly monochrome, but there is in fact extremely subtle layers of watercolor tinting the image. The illustration depicts the flight of a horde of fairies under a moonlit sky, darkened trees providing contrast against the nearly white and indistinct forms of the spirits. Arthur Rackham’s influence from Japanese woodblock prints is readily apparent in the attention spent on the thin, bending tree branches.

Illustrations by Stephen Gammell

1. The Dream

2. The Thing

3. Sam’s New Pet

4. Harold