Welcome to the Art of Narrative on Blogger

Welcome to the Art of Narrative on blogger, a companion to my tumblr blog, The Art of Narrative. This new blog allows for information about the artists and their work, and an opportunity for dialogue. I hope you enjoy the illustrations, and I welcome your comments.

I am using this site to post images I have not only located, but worked to improve, by cropping extraneous edges, and optimizing the color and clarity. Most of these images are in the public domain, from books scanned by library or research sites.

I copy images in the highest possible resolution, and I always link to the original source. If I've scanned the image from a book, I include a complete bibliographic citation including the title, author, publisher, and year of publication. Contemporary images obtained through fair use for educational purposes, are linked to information about the artist or illustrator.

If you use an image from this site, please link to the Art of Narrative as your source.

If you are a tumblr user, images from this site are easy to re-blog and credit, because they are already on my tumblr blog, The Art of Narrative.


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Minnie Dibdin Spooner: Illustrations for The Golden Staircase

These illustrations come from an impressive book published in 1906, titled The Golden Staircase: Poems and Verses for Children (G. P. Putnam's Sons), selected by Louey Chisholm, and illustrated by Minnie Dibdin Spooner. There are sixteen illustrations, including the frontispiece, plus the wonderful book cover itself.

I spent approximately eight hours over the course of four or five days copying and working with the images and posting them at my tumblr blog, The Art of Narrative. Work included straightening, cropping, adjusting the color and contrast, resizing the images, and identifying the poem each image illustrates through the volume's index.

Here's a link to the illustrations at my tumblr, The Art of Narrative.

Here's a link to the source of the illustrations at the Internet Archive, where you can read the poems and view the images in their original context.

I could not find a lot of information on Minnie Dibdin Davison Spooner (1867-1949), other than the fact she was a painter, a sculptor, and a designer. This article on her husband, Charles Spooner, a Scottish architect and designer, will give you some background about her.

There is also a brief article on Minnie Dibdin Spooner here, that adds to the information about her credentials, and the work she did with her husband designing, furnishing, and decorating churches.

Click on each image for greater detail.

Minnie Dibdin Spooner

The Golden Staircase ~ 1906

Minnie Dibdin Spooner

Frontispiece and Title Page

The Golden Staircase ~ 1906

Minnie Dibdin Spooner

The Land of Counterpane by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Golden Staircase ~ 1906

Minnie Dibdin Spooner

Good-night and Good-morning by Lord Houghton

The Golden Staircase ~ 1906

Minnie Dibdin Spooner

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod by Eugene Field

The Golden Staircase ~ 1906

Minnie Dibdin Spooner

The Lost Doll by Charles Kingsley

The Golden Staircase ~ 1906

Minnie Dibdin Spooner

The Lamb by William Blake

The Golden Staircase ~ 1906

Minnie Dibdin Spooner

The Camel's Hump by Rudyard Kipling

The Golden Staircase ~ 1906

Minnie Dibdin Spooner

The Babes in the Woods by Unknown

The Golden Staircase ~ 1906

Minnie Dibdin Spooner

The Imps in the Heavenly Meadow by Kate Bunce

The Golden Staircase ~ 1906

Minnie Dibdin Spooner

Lochinvar by Sir Walter Scott

The Golden Staircase ~ 1906

Minnie Dibdin Spooner

Lucy Gray by William Wordsworth

The Golden Staircase ~ 1906

Minnie Dibdin Spooner

The Lady Clare by Lord Tennyson

The Golden Staircase ~ 1906

Minnie Dibdin Spooner

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

The Golden Staircase ~ 1906

Minnie Dibdin Spooner

The Forsaken Merman by Matthew Arnold

The Golden Staircase ~ 1906

Minnie Dibdin Spooner

Baby by George MacDonald

The Golden Staircase ~ 1906

Minnie Dibdin Spooner

A Carol for Christmas Eve by Unknown

The Golden Staircase ~ 1906

Arthur Rackham's Fairies, Trees, and Peter Pan

No one can portray the fairy world better than Arthur Rackham. Imitators since who acknowledge his influence and have copied or adapted his style, have continued the traditions he established with success, but they owe the composition, the color tones, and the ethereal quality of figures and faces, and the animation of nature and objects to him.

Arthur Rackham ~ The Fairies of the Serpentine ~ 1906

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie

Arthur Rackham ~ The Little People Weave Their Summer Curtains ~ 1906

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie

 

Arthur Rackham ~ Peter Pan is the Fairies' Orchestra ~ 1906

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie

Arthur Rackham ~ There is Almost Nothing That has Such a Keen Sense of Fun ~ 1906

Illustration for Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie

Arthur Rackham ~ 1906

Fairies never say, 'We feel happy': what they say is, 'We feel dancey'

Illustration for Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie

Arthur Rackham ~ 1906

Queen Mab, Who Rules in the Gardens

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie

Arthur Rackham ~  They Will Certainly Mischief You ~ 1906

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie

Arthur Rackham ~ There Now Arose a Mighty Storm ~ 1906

Illustration for Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie

Arthur Rackham ~ When They Think You Are Not Looking ~ 1906

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie

At my tumblr blog, The Art of Narrative, I recently posted 15 of the 50 images Arthur Rackham created for Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie, first published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1906. I worked with the high resolution images to crop the borders and enhance the color. If you love Arthur Rackham, it is definitely worth a look to see Arthur Rackham's animated trees.

Click into the large resolution images for great detail.



Click HERE to see images from Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens at The Art of Narrative.

Click HERE to see all 50 images from the Harvard University Library.

Click HERE to see all of the Arthur Rackham images at The Art of Narrative.


Thank you to Uncertain Times and BibliOdyssey, for leading me to the source of these images!