Children's Illustration Archive

December 13, 2006 9:05 AM

The children's book illustrators archive. Czeschka - Die Nibelungen; Nielsen - Hansel and Gretel; Goble - Japanese Fairy Tales; Dulac - Arabian Nights; Pavlishin - Folktales of the Amur; Finlay - The Ship of Ishtar; Detmold - The Arabian Nights; Crane - Flora Feast; Kirin - Croatian Tales of Long Ago; Clarke - Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination; Collard - British Fairy Tales, and; more Rackham in the gallery then you can shake a pen at.
posted by OmieWise (14 comments total)

Great.
posted by marxchivist at 9:34 AM on December 13, 2006

Oooh, Omie! Most excellent linkage! Thank you!
posted by Lynsey at 10:01 AM on December 13, 2006

This is awesome. So many times you see these pictures used in books but never the complete series. My only gripe would be there are no hi-res versions in case you wanted to re-use the images in other media, but at least it's possible to see entire collections.
posted by stbalbach at 10:05 AM on December 13, 2006

That and they're all unfortunately branded with the website address, which pisses me off with public domain images.
posted by OmieWise at 10:12 AM on December 13, 2006

Awesome. If you want to save the pictures you can view the source of the full picture page to get the picture path.

I don't know if say these images were targeted at children. And if they were could you imagine the uproar if a childrens book was published today with those illustrations.
posted by Mitheral at 10:32 AM on December 13, 2006

Thanks Omie
posted by johnny novak at 10:51 AM on December 13, 2006

If you want to save the pictures you can view the source of the full picture page to get the picture path.

Also, if you use adblock, you can right click and select "adblock remove map" and then you can "view image" like you normally would.
posted by Democritus at 10:57 AM on December 13, 2006

Courtesy of Project Gutenberg: Sir John Tenniel's "Alice" Illustrations.
posted by Smart Dalek at 11:02 AM on December 13, 2006

Democritus writes "Also, if you use adblock,"

I'm running Adblock Plus. I'll switch over and give that a try.
posted by Mitheral at 12:18 PM on December 13, 2006

Cool, functionality I didn't know I needed.
posted by Mitheral at 12:29 PM on December 13, 2006

Beautiful - dozens and dozens of Edmund Dulac and Kay Nielsen* plates. Thanks for the early Xmas present, OmieWise!

*Although Disney's The Little Mermaid wasn't released until 1989, Kay Nielsen did concept color sketches for it back in the late 1930's. He also did concept sketches for Fantasia's Night on Bald Mountain^YT and Ave Maria^YT sequences, but his artistic nature couldn't handle the studio's production environment and he was laid off in 1940.

Quality takes time: more scans of Nielsen's fabulous work here and here. Sadly, he died in poverty in 1957.
posted by cenoxo at 12:31 PM on December 13, 2006

If Virgil Finlay's The Ship of Ishtar^NSFW is a children's book, you wouldn't have any trouble getting Dad to read bedtime stories...
posted by cenoxo at 1:57 PM on December 13, 2006

This is fabulous, in all sorts of ways... Thanks, Omie
posted by MinPin at 1:59 PM on December 13, 2006

What a visual treat. *sigh*, Some of the images are sublime, joyously serene and elegant. Thanks OmieWise.
posted by nickyskye at 4:50 PM on December 13, 2006