For years he had been quietly filling his stocking 1913

Arthur Rackham drew this image of a crow with pen, ink and watercolour, and its cross-hatching gives the bird’s black feathers the density of night. There's a real love of the material in this image, and the way Rackham draws the spindly tree branches, that dark stocking hanging down, even the single white thread hanging loose from the stocking’s mouth, shows the artist’s hand at play. The watercolour is very faint, like a memory of color. The texture of the paper shines through the ink, and the whole image seems to shimmer slightly. Look at the area between the crow's wing and the tree, where the white of the paper is still visible. It's so thin that it almost feels like the drawing is breathing. Rackham's illustrations are often compared to those of Aubrey Beardsley, but this image feels closer to the macabre humour of Edward Gorey, both artists who understood that the best stories are the ones that leave us with more questions than answers.