Once Upon A Time : The illustrations of tales and folklore
IMAGINARIUM : An Alternate History of Art
Welcome to Imaginarium: an alternate history of art. A podcast where we delve in to the most obscure parts of art history.
Hello dear listeners, I’m your host Nadjah, and in this podcast, we try to shed light on less studied parts of the history of art and visual culture. In today’s episode, we will finally dive deep into one of the major segment of the golden age of illustration, something that is arguably one of the most prolific parts of the era, which is the rise of book illustrations, but more precisely, the age of fairy tales, folk tales and fantasy illustrations. Once again, this mini-season very much follows a somewhat chronologically and thematically cohesive thread, so it would be definitely better to follow it episode by episode, if you are somehow just tuning in right now, welcome but i’ll just direct you to episode one of this mini-season just so everything makes sense for you, but if you have listened to the previous episode, well … we can simply dive in … So my lovely listeners…. let’s begin.
The 19th century brought the creation of the victorian concept of childhood and of the creation of a whole ecosystem around it. Before the late 19th century, the concept in itself of childhood was largely ignored and dismissed. Very similarly to the way the concept in itself of adolescence was constructed during the 1950s and the 1960s. And I mean truly as a concept within the mainstream society, because you know people have always been children and aged 14 or what not, but it’s the concept that being a teenager or a child, for that matter, was a uniquely different experience that deserved to be talked about in its own context and terms. During the late 19th century, the topic of childhood became a sort of subject of interest for the public, as the theories of Education in the Enlightenment came into the limelight once again. It is only really during the 19th century that books aimed directly toward an audience of children became actually popular and more marketable. Suggestions were made to the parents that having some leisure time for reading was a good past time for young children, which had an educational basis as well. Basically, reading should have an aim to educate as well as entertain. The importance of newly developed pedagogy theories as well as the fundamentals of the philosophy of Rousseau and John Locke, who advocated for reading for children, brought a new way of conceiving the raising of children. When it comes to storytelling, there was a shift from oral stories and the original folk stories who were very grim, violent and designed to teach the realities of the world to children, to a more sanitized and easier version to digest story for children. With less bloodshed and sexual assault lets say for one thing.
Of course, the content of children’s books wasn't only tales and stories but those tales were a big part of the corpus that was destined toward children, for both entertainment purposes, but also, as I said earlier, for a more gentle way of teaching. what we will be talking about today, will be mostly abut the golden age of illustration in Europe and the western world, but stories travel and shaped the way we understand and communicate about moral societal issues. but we will try to somehow capture the universality of fairytales, the inherent common human nature of folk stories, even the stories differ from place to place on the surface, at their core, they are the same. It is the same stories being told, times and times again. And to me, this is fascinating on so many levels, the idea that no matter how different cultures and lifestyles and contexts could be, there was something so incredibly human to the desire to tell stories to each other. To tell stories to explain the unexplained, to tell stories to teach and mold. With morals and explanations, but not in the way we understand them today. It was not something that was necessarily moralistic and paternalistic, but more so that children could understand the way of life, the gender norms, to prepare them and confront them to the realities fo life as they knew it. To prepare them for death, hurt, but also for the social norms and relationships.
The first illustrated children’s book is generally credited to John Newbery’s 1744 « A Little Pretty Pocket-Book : Intended for the instruction and amusement of little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly » It was a book where each page featured a letter of the alphabet, an image, as well as two written lines, one to describe the accompanying picture and a moral conclusion to it all. This really was an example of how children’s books and illustrations was going to decline itself from then on and during the Golden Age of Illustration. It was a way to teach the younger children while they could still have fun (but of course, as those are the victorians, i would wager that you should not have TOO much fun either) when it comes to the books that were offered in that era. It’s art that has an educational purpose mainly, and is entertaining and aesthetically pleasing on a second plan. But I think this is one of the things I hugely think is true, that you don’t have to compromise on anything, it is possible to have something have a practical purpose and still be aesthetically pleasing. And while those books were indeed beautiful, this was mainly because of a desire to attract clients, the first goal was to educate as well as to make money, of course.
A lot of these illustrators of the Golden Age illustrated books that were very much focusing on the concept of childhood, not only fairytales, even tho we will come to talk about fairytales in due time, but also very simple tales for children to be able to understand. It was that new perception of childhood that came to be during the late 19th century. If the concept of teenage-hood did not exist until the 1950s, then the concept of childhood was not set in stone until the late 19th century where that was there that they were really centered as an integral audience to be marketed to in the publishing industry. As can be said in the Rockwell center website « As Gleeson White, the editor of famed Victorian arts quarterly The Studio writes, “…the tastes of children as a factor to be considered in life are well-nigh as modern as steam or the electric light…”, so writing and creating new stories and illustrations specifically for young minds was not a priority before the development of the “childhood” in the Victorian era. »
The McLoughlin Brothers who had a very important role in the creation of the children’s book publishing world. The market that was really focused on selling books that were designed specially for children. A dr_ of he industry in the States. but amazingly cute aesthetic that were __ as a way to appeal to the demographic it was catered to. with wood block printing and colors Bright areas of solid color.
The use of chromolithography in the later half of the 19th century made it possible to create visually incredibly vibrant and colorful images that would appeal to a child reader, but also just generally afforded more freedom to the illustrators to create the images and art that they had in mind without any technological hindrance. Talented illustrators were an integral part of the publishing industry, but especially for children who might not yet still be able to read. They will have the objective of capturing the imagination of their audience, younger children as well as grown-ups, through the visual medium, to give a bit more interest to the stories or teachings. And we simply cannot begin to understand nor study those illustrations and fairytales without understanding the concept of intertextuality, which I don’t think I have quite explained just yet, but in simple words, it is the shaping of a text’s meaning by another text. And when we apply this concept to art history, this means that the understanding of a certain work of art will be through another painting or another text. So, in this particular case, it means that when you study an illustration of the golden age of illustration, you cannot ignore the context in which they were publish, to fully understand them, you have to undertand the stories they were part of. The conversation and push and pull between the text and the illustrations is essential to even begin to comprehend their meaning and their place within the broader culture.
The fairytale is a huge part of children’s book culture, while there were a lot of stories for children that were published and we talked a lot about children’s literature in general and the context surrounding its beginnings and the way it developed during the late years of the 19th century, but, still, no matter what, a key part of the tales and stories we learn as children are definitely fairytales and folktales. Stories that were historically passed through the oral tradition, and were only very recently written down and jotted down. The oldest fairytales were variations on stories such as beauty and the beast, Rumplestiltskin and Jack and the Beanstalk and have been first told from 4 thousand years ago to even 6 thousand years ago. Those origins predates some of the earliest literary texts and have traveled wide and far across the world and through time, always changing and evolving each time they are told anew. So these stories are built into the weaving of our beings more tightly than we can imagine.
Once upon a time. That is how it usually all starts, doesn’t it. We are all familiar with those tales. A beautiful and innocent princess, a faraway kingdom, cruel and conniving step-mothers and step-sisters, beastly husbands and kind godmothers, charming princes and mystical creatures. These stories now exist in the cultural backdrop for us all. I’ll be focusing in this episode more specifically on western fairytale stories as well as the visual adaptation of foreign tales from a western perspective of the golden age of illustration. But those stories are not static and never were. These stories travelled, from country to country, from generations to generations. They have universal themes and universal motifs and relatability. Even though the cultural backdrop will modify it and make them each unique to it particular context, there seems to be an understanding of the world and of their own social norms thar are always communicated through those tales. And also, they were simply a way of entertainment in a time where there were not a lot of ways to pass the time. Tall tales told around the fire from the voice of the grandmother during a rainy evening.
Fairy Tales and bedtime stories for children were always part of the general culture, especially in western society, but from the late 18th century and onwards, they steadily gained popularity until the late 19th century and beginning of the 20th century where the popularity of these stories was at an all time height. The stories were often found in small illustrated books that were read by both adults and children alike. From Perrault to Andersen, as well as various foreign tales. The late 19th century will see a growing industry for the illustrated book. The context of the industrial revolution as well as a renewed interest for folktales and fairytales will make for a very busy era of illustrated books. The reprinting of a lot of traditional fairy tales by Andrew Lang as well the constant new editions and new fairy tale books during that specific era will create a climate where lots of books will be published and even though, it will be mostly European tales, sometimes more foreign tales such as the 1001 nights, which also had a huge cultural impact, will also be published and illustrated by several artists of the era.
Charles Perrault in France, published his tales in 1697 under the tile « histoires du temps passé, avec des moralités » which can be translated to « stories of times past, with morals » so we can see this desire to teach and warn in those tales, from Sleeping Beauty, little red riding hood, blue beard and cinderella these stories are classics and endured the test of the time to really become cultural checkpoints of popular culture. Of course, this is also explained by the fac that a lot of the stories I have just named were the one who got an animated adaptation by the studios of Disney, but this is a story for another day, and that other day will be next episode, so please anticipate that one.
I'm not an expert in literature, at all, my focus after all is really the visual arts, as exemplified by this podcast being an art history and visual culture podcast, as this what I graduated in, but I do still want to make a rapid overview of the evolution and literary culture of fairytales in the west, especially during the 19th century and how it culminated with so many illustrated fairy tales during the later years of the 19th century. While the tales in themselves have existed for milleniums, it is really during the 17th century that they were brought to the attention in the literary circles, and writers such as Charles Perrault and Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy started compiling and writing these stories, and committing them to paper. It is this act of putting those words to paper that really changes the way these tales are perceived and understood. The Grimm brothers during the 19th century did the same process when it came to the stories of their country, they basically wrote and recorded the oral history of folktales and fairytales across Germany by compiling these tales mostly told by old women and publishing them.
The immense popularity of those coincided with the technological progresses in printing and mass production of books, making them more widely available than ever to the general population. During this process, there was a definite sanitization of the « original » fairy tales, and here i want you to know that I'm really saying original with quotes around it, because there’s no original stories, there’s many many stories and iterations of the stories, as they were found in the oral tradition before they were compiled on writing. That is simply the nature in itself of those folktales to never be static, to never be able to be fully captured. The magic of those stories lie in the different iterations, in the slight changes every orator makes when telling it, the traditions that were kept and the traditions that were discarded. And thus, there’s always ways to play with them and give them a thousand and one iterations and faces, and they will always be true.
The 1870s were a turning point for the golden age of illustration, which is why i use it as my point of reference for the start of this whole period, but it is when one of the first picture books , In Fairyland, A Series of Picture from the Elf World in december 1869, which was a huge picture book illustrated by Richard Doyle, illustrations that were not really the fairies and enchanting creatures that we now think of, they were more the traditional tiny fairies of yore, mischievous creatures of nature going on at their daily lives. Those illustrations, while seemingly childish at first glance were more geared toward an adult public and it was the beginning of the change within the publishing world to cater more to the younger audience.
When it comes to the illustrations that were published alongside the fairytales, the visual and stylistically aesthetics and different art styles were very representative of the very diverse art landscape of the era, from watercolors to oil paints to ink drawings to graphite, the illustrations fo fairytales and folk stories in the late 19th century spanned multiple styles and genres. So many of the artist of the those fifty years of the golden age have incredibly unique and personal art styles, while there are movements and artistic common threads, everyone interprets these visual influences in a very unique manner, but also each of these artists brings a new perspective to the way those fairytales are visually imagined, but also the visual archetypes that were codified during that era, especially for illustration aimed at a younger public, and hand in hand with those fairytales. These illustrations were in themselves, also a conduit for the ideas that the victorian society wished to communicate about social norms, gender roles and morality that they were conveying through their fairy tales.
The role of women and young girls, especially, was deeply codified and regimented through the use of stories and morals in the victorian era, but it is still possible to see that this didn’t necessarily mean that the only stories were ones where the heroine’s only conclusion was one where she lived as a wife or a mother. Some of these stories had their heroines explore ___ and ____. They were young girls and ___
Walter Crane is an immensely successful illustrator of the era, and the author of one « of the decorative illustration fo books old and new » in 1896, in which he explores the history of illustration that were a complement to text throughout history from the beginning of printing to the late 19th century. This book is a good example of the historical understanding of illustration history, but also of the various influences on the artistic world of the golden age of illustration, and he truly creates a direct line from the first presses of the late 15th century until the 19th century while meandering with the german, italian, french and japanese influences and the artists he considers as important to the understanding of the medium, and he names both Randolph Caldecott as well as Kate Greenaway as important figures of the illustration geared toward children. He explains that, for illustrators, the world of children’s literature and fairytales was one taht was generous to the flight of fancy of the illustrators, as it was one that afforded great visual freedom, as it was more of a fantastical story. In this book, he details not only the artistic principles and history of illustration, but all of the aspects that were pertinent to decorative illustrations for books, from the letterings, to the various embellishments. The book was a work of art in itself, and the decoration of it was not only limited to the illustrations that were created for it.
The art created for fairytales was honestly amazing, it was colorful, intricate, and still held a sense of humor to it, and as proven by his art and his writing, he had a deep knowledge of art history and of the visual culture that was surrounding him, and this is something that is very obvious in his art, where layers of art historical references meld and merge to create a multi-faceted work of art. Some of my favorite illustrations of his, are the ones he created for the tale of Beauty and the Beast, the character design for the beast are really unique in my opinion, as he has the head of a boar, and beauty seems heavily inspired by the pre-raphaelite imagination of a medieval princess. The story of the beauty and the beast is one of those tales that have been floating around for several thousand of years and was often used not only for exploring the power disparities between men and women, but also to prepare young women for their marriages to spouses they probably never met and who would become The Beast that they had to become kind and generous to in order for the Beast to turn back into a prince. While I am on the subject of this particular fairytale, my friend will literally, well not literally, skewer me if i do not mention that Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley is the book that, in her opinion, has the best understanding of this fairytale and that you should all read it, and to be honestly I do agree. So Doaa says rose daughter by robin McKinley.
The particular historical context of the 19th century in Europe will bring a newfound fascination for the Orient, and while we have discussed the interest for all things japanese, there is also the interest for the arab and indian world as well, with the colonial empires of European countries such as France and the United Kingdom , which are the dynamic duo of colonisation let’s not forget, exercising their powers over countries such as Algeria, Egypt, India and many others. And because of that colonial link, western culture longed to be mystified and captured by the exoticism and romanticism of a foreign land.
The most important element to consider to truly understand what is orientalist art, is that it is art made by white people for white people. It won’t be a real representation of those countries, the culture and the people that will live in it. Orientalist art will create a truly foreign, exciting and, most importantly, imaginary idea of what the Orient is. It’s truly an invention of the West. One of the main scholars of Orientalism and post-colonial theory is Edward Said, and what he will explain of what is Orientalism. For Said, Orientalism will be a way for the Western World to speak about the Orient from the western perspective. It will be a way to look at the Other and to truly otherize the East by putting it in contrast to the West. Said explains that the western culture will develop its own identity by putting it in opposition to what it considers foreign. I mean I have said all of this before, but I always think that it’s nice to make sure everyone is on the same page just in case, about the terms and the notions that we are talking about, I don’t want anyone to be confused or lost about what I am saying during this podcast ever. Or more simply put, as Harvey Awards winner illustrator and author Trung Le capecchi-nguyen once said, « orientalism is being greedy, horny and scared ». So those images, even if they do depict the Orient, won’t belong to the Orient. They belongs to the West.
Edmund Dulac was french watercolor artist and illustrator who worked mostly in England during the late golden age of illustration and is an artist whose work i find absolutely magnificent but is also tainted by the orientalist craze of his era. Dulac illustrated books and magazines for most of his career, and not all of them were an orientalist mess, I think he is extremely skillful and talented as an artist The main book we will talk about in this essay will be Stories from the Arabian Nights, written in 1907, and published and translated by Hodder & Sloughton. This edition will contain 50 colored illustrations as well as a pseudo arabic typography to give an exotic feel to this book and the tales it contains. The oriental woman is shown as languid, relaxed, the epitome of everything that the western woman isn’t. Mostly, what I want to say is that women in the western society should be proper, civilized, polite, quiet, it was a very codified and strict gender role for women. And this is what orientalism is about, once again, it's putting the Orient™ in contrast to the West, so that the West can build its own cultural identity by comparing itself to the East. It’s also possible to notice that the colors that will be used for these illustrations will be very rich and vibrant. The color scheme will be used to add a sense of exoticism and foreignness. The imagined East will be luxurious, wild, pleasurable, the complete opposite of a western society that was still plagued by very strict sociological rules. This imagined freedom and temptation of sins will fascinate and enrapture the western viewer. So the visuals of this story will be created specifically to cater to a western public and that’s where the orientalism and the post-colonial perspective of these illustrations will start being in play. You can’t ignore the relations of power between the colonized and the colonizer. It is more than simply a curious look upon the east, the west will look at the East with a colonial gaze. These illustrations will indeed appropriate and incorporate elements of oriental art, but in the end, it will only be a reflection of western society, a mirror of its own anxieties and social issues.
I do not want to reduce down Edmund Dulac or his contemporaries simply to their orientalist art, god knows there are worst culprits, with artists such as René Bull, but it is still relevant to mention, because these orientalist depictions will influence the way foreigners, non-white people, will be perceived in the west, and these orientalist tropes do still have an impact even today in how we imagine the Oriental Other. The thing with those illustrations is that they are gorgeous. They truly are. I would be simply lying if I were to pretend they are not, but even the most beautiful things can have an ugly or complicated history. Edmund Dulac was known as one of the best illustrators of the Golden Age and he really was, as demonstrated by how he was one of the most well paid illustrators of his era as early as his early thirties. His eminently ethereal art style made him very much a good candidate to illustrate fairytale, and his illustrations were extremely lovely and elegant. His main medium was watercolor, which is a paint that is very transparent and depending on the way it is used can give a very diffused effect, which really captured that sort of timeless feeling that fairytales usually have being set « once upon a time » in a vague and distant past.
Arthur Rackham’s illustrations, for his side, were more fantastical. Instead of going for a more lovely and cutesy aesthetic, which by the way, if you don’t know me yet, this is not pejorative at all for me, I absolutely adore anything lovely and cutesy. But he still went a very different route with his art, creating a pictural universe that, contrasting that with the more childish and warm illustrations of the era, that did not feel as safe. The monsters are scary, the woods seem creepy and uninviting. I would argue that Rackham was not only an illustrator, but a fantasy illustrators of the time, who seemed to revel in creating bizarre and weird, while still giving those images an air of realism and grounding them in the plausible with the use of a very earthy color palette. This reminds me a lot of this very specific category of children’s media that is honestly quite horrific if you think about it a bit, but this sort of slightly scary and slightly morbid stories have a definite allure for children, one only has to look at the incredible success of stories such as Peter Pan, the unfortunate events of the baudelaire orphans or the children’s literature of Neil Gaiman with books such as Coraline and the Graveyard Book. The original, well original… as we said earlier, there’s not really an original tale set in stone, those stories are ever-evolving, but let’s say the older ones, they catch the imagination of a younger audience very easily and they are both intimately terrifying and fascinating to those young minds.
I think this is one of the things when one loves the art of the past, whether we’re talking about books, movies, visual art, or anything really, it is having to contend that the historical context of these works of art are complicated. And it is not something that we have to necessarily forgive and forget. I think it is more detrimental to ignore it. But as someone who loves the art of the 19th century a whole lot, especially when it comes to the graphic and visual culture of the era, as evidenced by me writing a whole season on this subject, but even with how much I love it, it has a painful history to it. A history of imperialism, a history of inequalities, of wars and despair. But also of art, joy, sharing and creating. I love the visuals of the golden age, and I adore unraveling the histories behind it, even though some of it is difficult to deal with. Beautiful things often have a very ugly story. But nonetheless, it is simply an era that I adore, visually and thematically. It is not perfect, but it is in the past, and what I can do now, is hopefully teach people all that I love about art history, but also show the ugly parts of it. Hw much of it is ruled by colonialism, by capitalism and inequalities, just so hopefully, hopefully, the art that comes now and after will be better. So that people can look at art and think critically, and understand how everything is linked. How everything is connected, for a better appreciation of art, whether older art or newer art, or for artists, to create more interesting and layered art. I know I just spent a good chunk of this episode talking about the orientalism of the fairytale illustrations of the golden age, but even with that, I think those illustrations are technically beautiful, and what does this say about me ? Especially as an arab woman ? To me, in the end, what I want to do is to show this orientalism, to show the way racism and imperialism were so entrenched in that era that of course it will permeate everything that was happening then, and it continues to permeate everything that is created and happening today as well. In the meantime, I still think these illustrations are gorgeous, and I absolutely adore exploring the world of fairy tale and their illustrations and the way they were understood within the visual culture, and I hope it was entertaining and illuminating for everyone.
Before we go, I put a bunch of relevant resources on today’s subject in the show notes, you have some books as well as some theses and articles that you can read if you maybe want to further your knowledge and read more on the subject. As always, all the relevant images will also be on all of our social platforms @ imaginarium_pod on instagram as well as on twitter. This podcast was written, narrated and produced, by yours truly, Nadjah, If you want to support this podcast, you can do so on patreon.com-nadjah , n a d j a h . I want to take this opportunity to thank my patrons : may leigh, vilja sala, Trung-Le Nguyen Cappecci, Jak, Sam Hirst, Jenny, Jameson Gregg as well as Nathalie, thank you so much for making the work i do with this podcast possible.
On this, I wish you all a very lovely day, evening or night, and I hope to see you again very soon.