He rescued a maid from the Dey of Algiers. 1911

Arthur Rackham made this pen and ink drawing, “He rescued a maid from the Dey of Algiers”, sometime between 1880 and 1930. The illustration’s visual texture comes from the repetitive, linear marks of the pen, built up to describe the scene. In illustrations like this, the artist's hand is mediated by reproductive technologies. Rackham’s drawing would have been rendered into a printing plate, ready to be editioned and bound in a book – the nineteenth century’s most important contribution to visual culture. Rackham was one of many artists who embraced this form, producing images for mass consumption. Illustrations like this one offer an interesting counterpoint to the idea of the artist as a solitary genius. Instead, they represent a system of labor, where artists, printers, and publishers collaborate to create cultural products for a wide audience.