George Cruikshank

George Cruikshank is generally regarded as the most brilliant English book illustrator of his period.   He produced celebrated drawings to illustrate Dickens and the Brothers Grimm, as well as political and social cartoons.  The self-trained artist's overwhelming vitality led him to leave his signature (some 6000 times in total) in every field and genre of English graphics, humor, and current commentary.  When he undertook to illustrate books for children, he became the first English artist who dared combine lively imagination and high good humor with fine drawing.  Darton associates Cruikshank with the "dawn of levity" in children's books.  Because of its comic qualities, Mahoney considers German Popular Stories (1823), the first English translation of the Grimms" fairy tales, to be "the first picture book for children in our modern sense (31)," but since the book is evidently not a picture book, but rather an illustrated book, she may mean just the fact that the illustrator is as important as the translator or writer.  At any rate, Cruikshank's etchings for this volume were copied both in Germany and France shortly after they appeared in their original editions.  In England they became such classics that John Ruskin was later to refer to them as the finest etchings done since Rembrandt.

The title page from German Popular Stories (1823), in sepia ink, with copperplate engraving.  The translation is by Edgar Taylor.  This illustration relates to no specific tale, but establishes the mood of levity of the oral tradition from which the Grimm fairy tales derive.

A scene from "The Elves and the Shoemaker."  The evident joy of the elves, who are trying on their new clothes, and of the shoemaker and his wife animates most of this delightful genre scene.  As in many of the etchings, there is a conscious attempt to depict the actual surroundings with accuracy and at the same time to create an antiquarian aura the Germanic folk tradition.  Many feel that this is the greatest of all Cruikshank's etchings for the Grimm tales, and it was his personal favorite as well. After such solemn pictures that had been pointing morals in children's books, we can be fairly certain that children reveled in this illustration - the elves prancing in high glee as they try on their new clothes, while the old shoemaker and his wife watch the performance from behind a curtain

A scene from "Rumpel-Stilts-Kin."   Rumpel-Stilts-Kin is shown pulling his foot out of the floor the moment after the queen has guessed his name.  He has long spindling legs and wears a tall hat adorned with a chicken feather.  Taylor's translation indicates that he was not unaware of his illustrator, since on the second day of guessing the queen begins her recitation of comic names with "Bandy-legs, Hunch-back, Crook-shanks," and so on.

A Comic Alphabet (1837) was a small accordion book with 24 etchings representing the letters of the alphabet.  N/Nightmare is based Fuseli's famous painting of the same subject, but here the artist approaches the theme from a comic point of view and portrays a nightmare resulting from overeating.  In O/Orpheus, Orpheus plays a violin in front of Hades and Persephone, who are seated on their throne with Cerberus bellowing alongside. The violinist may be a caricature of Paganini.

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