am afraid I cannot manage to do that though I know I should enjoy it. But I am kept so busy at home over my books & pictures that I have not time to accept half the kind invitations I receive.
‘I am very glad you like my illustrations. I am rather afraid that the books of mine that are coming out this year & next, which illustrate Wagner’s great Music-stories, the “Ring of the Nibelungs”, are not very well suited for those lucky people who haven’t yet finished the delightful adventure of growing up, but soon, perhaps, you will know & be fond of Wagner’s music and writings, & then you may like these drawings of mine as well as the others.
‘Believe me,
Sincerely yours
Arthur Rackham’
The Wagner illustrations that Rackham had been working on and which appeared in two parts in 1910 and 1911 as The Rhinegold and The Valkyrie and Siegfried and The Twilight of the Gods (see page 95), represented an important achievement for him. It cannot be denied that Rackham was to some extent the victim of his success in the Christmas book trade, and of his mastery of the technical process of colour reproduction. His genius for fanciful improvisation appeared so inexhaustible – for he was remarkably consistent in his patient application to his craft – that it was all too easy to undervalue him as an artist of the creative imagination. Yet there are many drawings throughout his best books, such as Rip, Peter Pan, or the Dream, which reveal to the discerning what an original artist he was (and the tail-pieces and other decorations in the text must not be overlooked in this search). The drawings for Wagner gave him above all a theme – the Norse Myths – which appealed to his nordic sympathies, and with it a series of noble motives. Although the heroic did not really suit his talent, his gods and Rhine-maidens were realized on a high plane of imagination, probably because Wagner had deeply
