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Arthur Rackham: How a Tree Became a Character
Arthur Rackham's approach to transforming a tree into an expressive character relies on draughtsmanship principles developed by historical master artists. Giving a tree individual character requires rendering muscular bark growth, wayward branch curvatures, and observed natural textures rather than applying rigid compositional rules. Muscular Trunk and Anatomical Growth A drawn tree achieves individual character when an artist records its physical structure instead of relying on generic shapes. In his studies of tree stems, John Ruskin examined Albrecht Dürer’s engraving of Adam and Eve as a prime example of factual draughtsmanship. Dürer rendered the wrinkles of bark, smooth wood emerging beneath, and the anatomy of growth at the root of an apple tree. Every line in that drawing contributes directly to facts of natural structure, showing how timber anchors itself into the soil. This anatomical approach requires depicting the internal muscular forces of the trunk. Stripping a pine trunk of its bark reveals wood fissured along its grain in precise directions. At the point where a bough joins the main trunk, the wood displays contortions similar to human muscle. Dürer and Rembrandt rendered woody texture with notable accuracy, though both artists sometimes missed the sweeping grace of larger lines. Capturing character in a trunk demands depicting these muscular junctions where boughs gather themselves out of the stem. The Principle of Unexpectedness in Boughs Character in foliage and timber depends heavily on what Ruskin termed the character of unexpectedness. A drawn bough appears dead if it follows predictable angles or symmetrical curves. J.M.W. Turner demonstrated this principle by drawing boughs that shoot outward like a letter Y with a straight branch, only to correct that stiffness with a zigzag behind it. Boughs that seem awkward individually create unified forms when drawn together, surprising the viewer through subtle variations in line. These curves waver perpetually along every edge, resembling the finished structure of a fine musical melody. The lines used by Turner appear straight at first glance, but long observation reveals tremulous movements along their edges. A bough never achieves true character unless it appears wayward, seeming quiet initially before revealing unexpected turns. By mastering this waywardness, an artist transforms a static outline into an organic entity with its own distinct rhythm. ArthurRackham, Aesop-11trees. Public domain; source: Wikimedia Commons. Natural Curves versus Artificial Rules Unimaginative artists fail to give character to trees because they rely on mechanical rules and received formulas of composition. When an artist without direct observation draws a tree, he sets down a serpentine form for the trunk simply to avoid straightness. He attaches branches according to artificial rules, making three or four boughs start from points one above another at unequal distances. He bends one branch downward while three go up, forcing two to cross to create forced contrast. This reliance on rules produces lifeless patterns rather than convincing timber. Titian frequently fell into a different error, drawing tree trunks with flaccidity that made them resemble flexible seaweed. His habit of drawing the human figure led him to introduce soft animal curves into wood. Real timber possesses a stiffness and spring that separates it completely from animal forms. The subtle curvature of a branch lies within the thickness of a pencil line, defying easy recollection or systematic invention. Surface Movement and Foliage Structure Setting a tree in motion requires an understanding of how foliage accumulates and branches ramify in space. In his painting of Saint George, Albrecht Altdorfer used a brush technique that captures the natural disorder of leaves. He laid light strokes over a dark ground to establish the body of a branch, reflecting how outer leaves catch light first while screening inner depths. Younger shoots at branch tips appear brighter than older growth behind them, establishing a sense of continuous development. Altdorfer allowed this surface chatter of leaves to become the organizing principle of his entire composition. Slender trunks emerge on the left, a thicker trunk gleams near the centre, and other stems disappear into a swarm of green. Some branches grow straight upward, others drift laterally, and others convulse in all directions at once. Because trees possess a repetitive structure, an artist can use these multiplying units to set the whole plant into motion across the picture surface. Added Knowledge and True Finish A tree becomes a fully realized character only when an artist adds specific physical details derived from close observation. Turner achieved complete finish in his drawing of ash trunks at Bolton Abbey by adding observed facts. He recorded the texture of bark, the anatomy of muscle beneath, reflected lights in recessed hollows, dark moss stains, and flickering shadows cast by foliage above. He described this process of finishing a picture as carrying the work forward through added truth. By contrast, John Constable failed to distinguish between moss and shadow in his drawing of Helmingham Park. His central dark touches confused surface stains with the shaded side of the trunk, producing vague brush sweeps without cast shadows or underlying anatomy. Adding dark tones without anatomical knowledge merely blackens a drawing. True finish requires building character through verified facts of growth rather than darkening shadows to conceal ignorance. Printmaking and Line Precision Translating the character of trees into prints requires preserving the precise relationships of light and bough arrangement. In Turner's tree drawings, such as those in his Liber Studiorum series including Cephalus and Procris or Hedging and Ditching, woody stiffness combines with the inventive grace of upper boughs. Works such as Chain Bridge over the Tees render thickets with exact attention to aerial relations and the play of light among complex boughs. Poor printmaking destroys these qualities by substituting mechanical cross-hatching for observational knowledge. Engravings produced in the eighteenth century often turned tree trunks into standardized patterns. When Miller engraved Turner's Modern Italy, he preserved the specific contours of foreground trunks, whereas Meulemeester's engraving after Raphael reduced tree stems to arbitrary lines. Correct draughtsmanship in print requires maintaining the unique direction of bark peeling and the subtle spring of woody curves.
Tezcatlipoca and the Five Suns
From the primordial waters, Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl lure Cipactli, seize her, and tear her apart after she bites off Tezcatlipoca’s foot. They shape her remains into the earth and other parts of the world, although accounts differ about her form and what her body produced. The Making of the Earth from Cipactli Cipactli devoured everything around her in the primordial waters. Each time the Four Tezcatlipocas tried to make the world, the enormous creature ate or destroyed what they had made. Quetzalcoatl, the White Tezcatlipoca, and his brother Tezcatlipoca, the Black Tezcatlipoca, watched her from above. They became frustrated and decided that Cipactli had to die. Her body would provide a foundation for the world. Tezcatlipoca dangled one of his feet in the water as bait. Cipactli seized it and began chewing it off. While she was occupied, Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl grabbed her. The two gods wrestled with the creature and ripped her apart. Tezcatlipoca lost his foot in the struggle. They stretched and shaped Cipactli's remains into the earth and the rest of the world. One account also says that they made Tlaloc, the rain god, and the first people from her corpse. Another says that Tezcatlipoca tore off the monster's jaw and used it to make the earth. Some accounts describe Cipactli as a huge goddess who floated in the waters. Others call her a gigantic crocodile. One account continues the story after her death. Because Tezcatlipoca had lost his foot in the fight, he became the first sun. Quetzalcoatl resented this and knocked him from the sky with a stone club. Other accounts say that Tezcatlipoca lost his foot when it became trapped in the door of the underworld. The accounts differ in Cipactli's form and in what her body produced, but connect her dismemberment with the formation of the earth. Source note: Primary text: the ancient sources. Corpus check: Aztec Mythology. Tezcatlipoca Becomes the First Sun Tezcatlipoca took the place of the sun and began to rule the first cosmic age. The gods had quarrelled over which of them would become the sun god. They knew that the world needed sunlight to help crops grow and to keep living things from freezing. Ometeotl's four offspring joined the dispute, and the struggle for supremacy continued through a series of long ages called Suns. In each age, one god prevailed and directed the world's course. Tezcatlipoca ruled the first Sun. He was associated with the north and with darkness, and the jaguar was his animal. Human beings lived during this age, but Tezcatlipoca later turned against them. In one account, he sought revenge after four wise beings, Oxomoco, Cipactonal, Tlaltetecui, and Xochicauaca, had been given a place in the world. He made his jaguars attack the people and eat them. The destruction of the people ended the first age. Tezcatlipoca's Sun also came to an end, and another god took his place. Quetzalcoatl became the second Sun and created new people. Tezcatlipoca remained angry and turned these people into monkeys. Quetzalcoatl then left his position as the sun and blew the monkey people away with a hurricane. Tlaloc became the third Sun after him. The accounts differ in the details of the first age, but they place Tezcatlipoca at its beginning. Tezcatlipoca Becomes the First Sun. Original MythSource illustration created for this story; not a historical artwork. Source note: Primary text: the ancient sources. Corpus check: Aztec Mythology. Tezcatlipoca Overthrows Quetzalcoatl As the gods tried to make the world, the giant crocodile Cipactli ate or destroyed their work. The gods resolved to kill her. The Black Tezcatlipoca dangled his foot in the water, and Cipactli seized it. While she chewed it off, the brothers grabbed her and tore her apart. From her body they formed the world. They also made Tlaloc, the rain god, and the first people. The four resourceful offspring of Ometeotl then quarrelled over which god would become the sun and rule the world. Tezcatlipoca became the first sun. In one account, this sun was destroyed by tigers. Another account says that Quetzalcoatl, the White Tezcatlipoca, resented Tezcatlipoca's rule and knocked him from the sky with a stone club. Quetzalcoatl then became the second sun. The people of that age lived on nuts. After several centuries, the still angry Tezcatlipoca caused trouble by turning them into monkeys. Quetzalcoatl answered with powerful hurricanes, which blew the monkeys away and ended that age. For the third age, Quetzalcoatl persuaded Tlaloc to become the sun. Tlaloc ruled people who ate a different food. His age ended in a rain of fire, and the people became birds. Quetzalcoatl then began the fourth age by giving the office of sun goddess to Chalchiuhtlicue, Tlaloc's second spouse. Her reign was unhappy. Tezcatlipoca denounced her and eventually knocked her out of the sky. Another account says that her age ended in a great flood, from which one man and one woman survived. The present age is the fifth sun, ruled by Xiuhtecuhtli, the fire god. It is expected to end in earthquakes. The supplied accounts describe rival gods taking the sun and destroying each age. They do not state that Tezcatlipoca overthrew Quetzalcoatl from the second sun. Source note: Primary text: the ancient sources. Corpus check: Aztec Mythology.
Aubrey Beardsley's Salome: Black Ink and White Space
Aubrey Beardsley created his illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s play Salome using sharp pen lines and stark contrasts of black ink and white space. Published in 1894 for the English edition of the play, these drawings relied on photomechanical reproduction to combine delicate hair-thin linework with bold black blocks, creating images that challenged Victorian morality and traditional book illustration. Early Career and Graphic Beginnings Beardsley attended Bristol Grammar School for four years, where he drew caricatures of teachers and illustrated the school journal, Past and Present. His career moved forward after an uninvited visit to the studio of painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Burne-Jones spotted Beardsley's sister Mabel because of her red hair and admitted them into the studio. Impressed by the drawings in Beardsley's portfolio, Burne-Jones advised the young artist to attend evening classes at the Westminster School of Art. In the early 1890s, Beardsley produced illustrations and covers for Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. This long project required more than three hundred illustrations and ornaments. Inspired by the Kelmscott Press, Beardsley framed pages with large decorative borders. As he grew frustrated with the extended project, his designs departed more and more from the source text, introducing entirely unrelated imagery. The decorative borders became filled with abstract tension and grotesque forms. The Collaboration with Oscar Wilde Beardsley met Oscar Wilde in 1893, a meeting that proved decisive for his career. Wilde had written his play Salomé in French, altering the biblical story from the New record. In the original gospel account, Salome asks for the head of John the Baptist at her mother's request. In Wilde's rewrite, Salome asks for the head herself because the saint spurns her sexual advances. This theme of sexual passion and bizarre behaviour held strong appeal for British decadent writers and artists. Wilde's play was published in French in 1893. When an English translation by Lord Alfred Douglas was prepared for publication in 1894, Beardsley produced the black and white illustrations. Beardsley felt enthusiasm for the project and got involved in the translation process. In response, Wilde presented Beardsley with a dedicated copy of the play. However, Wilde's approval of the artwork diminished once the illustrated edition appeared in print. Wilde complained that Beardsley's Art Nouveau style showed too much Japanese influence, which he believed was inappropriate for a Byzantine play. In addition, Wilde was concerned about the impact of the drawings on his own work. Beardsley's illustrations were visually independent from the text, leading Wilde to feel that the graphic art eclipsed the author's writing. Aubrey Beardsley's Illustrations to Salome by Oscar Wilde MET DP863673. CC0; source: Wikimedia Commons. Visual Influences and Public Outrage Beardsley's graphic technique incorporated elements from several artistic traditions. He combined influences from Japanese graphic arts with details from the prints of Albrecht Dürer and French Rococo artists. The explicit erotic content in his work was partly inspired by volumes of Japanese erotic prints, known as Shunga, which circulated among collectors in Europe and America. By joining these visual sources with a disregard for Victorian morality, Beardsley produced work that flouted social conventions. The drawings contained allusions to female sexual desire that caused outrage in the British press. Beardsley straddled the boundary between fine art and commercial illustration. Unlike artists who produced self-published albums, publishers commissioned most of Beardsley's work for books and literary magazines. The degree to which Beardsley conformed to the role of a traditional illustrator remains a subject of debate among art historians and literary scholars. Technical Execution and Stylistic Shift Beardsley's pen and ink style was suited to the photomechanical method of reproduction used by publishers in the 1890s. This process allowed him to employ extremely delicate, hair-thin lines alongside solid, dramatic blocks of black and white. His work for Salome shows a rapid development from his earlier Morte d'Arthur illustrations. In drawings such as The Climax, Beardsley abandoned conventional background settings, dropping any attempt to locate his figures within physical interiors or outdoor scenes. In The Climax, Salome floats in the upper half of the frame, presented as if transcendent in her moment of victory. Behind her head, a cloud of black circular forms evokes the energy of her internal desires. Below Salome, blood dripping from the severed head of John the Baptist forms a dark pool. White areas in the drawing suggest a glistening liquid surface, out of which a strange flower emerges. Symbolism and Compositional Detail The sinuous forms of evil flowers in Beardsley's drawings indicate a connection to French Symbolism and Baudelaire's text Les Fleurs du Mal. A copy of Baudelaire's book is explicitly drawn on the dressing table in Beardsley's illustration Toilet of Salome I. This inclusion demonstrates how Beardsley stretched the conventions of book illustration, as the toilet scene does not correspond to any event written in Wilde's play. The Climax itself was a reprise of an illustration Beardsley published in The Studio magazine in 1893, an image that secured him the commission for the Salome book. In the illustration, Salome holds the severed head of John the Baptist to take the kiss denied to her while he lived. Although dead, the severed head continues to project disdain. John's snakelike hair and Salome's octopus coif transform the figures into Medusa-like images driven by hatred. The Frontispiece and Textual Departure The dark pool of blood beneath John's head nourishes phallic plants that slither around Salome like vines. Beardsley used this plant motif to reinforce the decadent theme of the scene. The confrontation takes place within a flat, abstract composition where curvilinear lines twist in rhythmic patterns. At certain points in the drawing, the thin ink line almost disappears entirely into the surrounding white space. The frontispiece to the volume, titled The Woman in the Moon, further demonstrates Beardsley's departure from simple textual illustration. The drawing features a caricature of Oscar Wilde's face as the moon looking down on a pair of figures. These figures are identified as the Young Syrian who loves Salome and the Page who loves the Young Syrian. The ambiguous identity of the moon figure matches the internal contradictions found throughout Wilde's text.