Illustrated books

Being a functional art, illustration is regarded as a craft rather than High Art, which is to deny its ability to be highly sophisticated and rich, as well as provide astute social comment and visual humour.

The period 1850s to the 1930s was a golden age for the genre of illustrated books.A revolution in printing led to mass market reproduction and the development of printing methods, resulting in an era of high-quality beautifully illustrated gift books.Daniel Vierge and other pioneers developed printing technology to the point that drawings and paintings could be reproduced with reasonable accuracy. The most talented artists were thereby introduced to a medium that, at last, had the ability to reproduce the exquisite detail of their work as they originally envisaged.

The first widely distributed gift book was published in 1905, Washington Irving’s short story Rip Van Winkle with the addition of 51 colour plates by a true master of illustration, Arthur Rackham. Well known Illustrators such as Randolph Caldecott, Walter Crane, Edmund Dulac and Kate Greenaway are just a few of the popular Golden Age artists represented in the Gibson Library Collection.