Sunday, February 19, 2012

Resurfaced

Wonderful golden age images have resurfaced here and there for modern usage. Here, a favorite image, Arthur Rackham's 1909 Jewels From the Deep, is nicely used as a modern book cover for a book that's about, well, #@*% yeah, mermaids.

Arthur Rackham — Jewels from the Deep

2 comments:

Larry MacDougall said...

Very beautiful - I think the publishers would have been hard pressed to find a modern artist to create an equally compelling image. AR does not seem to have lost any of his magic over the years.

Annie said...

Hi Thom,

I came across this Rackham painting a while back, and posted it on my Art of Narrative tumblr: http://artofnarrative.tumblr.com/post/1127896100/arthur-rackham-jewels-from-the-deep-1909-pen

The image I worked from was brighter, but both capture the wonderful mermaid scales and the touches of deep color for the swirls and whirlpool in the surface of the water.

This painting is a great example of Rackham's ability to make the fantastic real. The anatomy of the mermaids is so natural and perfect, and integrated with their tails, we don't even think to doubt them.