Cleveland Museum of Art

The Green Dragon

Date

1910

Medium

pen and black ink and watercolor on paper

Culture

England, 20th century

Department

Drawings

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

One of the best-known book illustrators of his time, Arthur Rackham worked at the turn of the 20th century in the period now sometimes described as the genre's golden age. His style combined intricate line work with delicate coloring to create scenes that were timeless, mysterious, and sometimes dark. This combination was particularly well suited for fantasy subjects like fairytales, Nordic and Germanic legends, and the dragon in this illustration, first published in his Book of Pictures of 1913. The beast's sinuous body echoes the lines describing the trees' gnarly trunks, roots, and branches, and the ripples of the water in the stream, highlighting its unity with the nature that surrounds it. Rackham evokes a world both similar and different to our own, where nature is both magical and dangerous. The design for the dragon in this illustration derives from one of the black and white vignettes placed over the chapter titles in the 1909 edition of Undine illustrated by Rackham.

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