Cleveland Museum of Art

And Now They Never Meet in Grove or Green

Arthur Rackham

Date

1908

Medium

pen and black ink and watercolor with scraping and minute touches of white gouache on artist's illustration board

Culture

England, 20th century

Department

Drawings

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

This drawing is one of 40 made by Arthur Rackham to illustrate William Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream . It depicts the confrontation between Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies, that takes place in the woods outside of Athens in act 2, scene 1. The artist painted a stormy sky looming over the magical couple to echo the story's mood. Rackham worked during a golden age of book illustration in England, around the turn of the 20th century, and the images he produced for literary works influenced future productions of Shakespeare's work. Arthur Rackham was one of the first book illustrators to take advantage of color halftone printing, augmenting his ink drawings with subtle washes of transparent hues.

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