‘Seize the despoiler!, Rescue the gold! Help us! Help us! Woe! Woe!’ 1910

Arthur Rackham made ‘Seize the despoiler!, Rescue the gold! Help us! Help us! Woe! Woe!’ with ink and watercolor. Look at these characters plummeting through a dark void. It’s the kind of image that sucks you right into the story, or rather, into the moment just before the story. Rackham’s lines are so delicate but create such texture. It's like he’s not just drawing figures, but also the weight of the air around them. Notice how the strokes vary? Thick, dark, thin, light – almost like he’s conducting an orchestra of lines. The light colors wash across parts of the image, giving just a hint of form to these creatures as they fall. It reminds me of Paula Rego's work, that same mix of the whimsical and the unsettling, but Rackham’s got this hyper-detailed approach that’s just mesmerizing. Is it beautiful? Scary? Funny? Who knows! That’s the fun of it.