And that is the story of Mr. and Mrs. Vinegar 1927

Arthur Rackham made this strange and unsettling illustration for the fairy tale, “And that is the story of Mr. and Mrs. Vinegar,” with ink and watercolor. The washes of color are so delicate, almost like a memory fading at the edges, but the ink lines! Those are sharp and sure, twisting and turning to create these looming tree-monster things. It’s like the whole scene is built from nervous energy, from the ground up. Check out the tree in the middle – the way its trunk seems to morph into a grimacing face, those spiky branches like grasping claws. It's like Rackham is showing us the moment when the familiar turns monstrous, when the everyday anxieties take shape. But maybe that's the point with art: to capture life's fleeting feelings, the beautiful and the bizarre, and pin them down with a line. Like Goya, he's not afraid to go dark.