Randolph Caldecott

For more information on Randolph Caldecott, visit Britannica.com.

(b Chester, 22 March 1846; d St Augustine, FL, 12 Feb 1886). English illustrator, painter and sculptor. Caldecott worked as a bank clerk in Whitchurch and Manchester and attended evening classes at the Manchester School of Art. He moved to London in 1872 and studied briefly at the Slade School of Fine Art. Through the painter Thomas Armstrong, he was introduced to London editors and publishers. He collaborated with Armstrong and W. E. Nesfield on decorative paintings for aesthetic interiors, notably at Bank Hall (1872-3), Derbys. Caldecott was taught to model by Jules Dalou, later modelling the gilt capitals of birds for the Arab Hall (1877-9) at Leighton House, London. Outstanding among Caldecott's work were his illustrations to Washington Irving's books, such as Old Christmas (1875), and the jolly Christmas stories and illustrated letters from abroad commissioned by the Graphic. However, his reputation rests on the frequently reprinted series of 16 picture books for children published between 1878 and 1885.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Often called the father of the picture book, Randolph Caldecott (1846-1886) is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential illustrators in the field of children's literature.

An English artist who illustrated picture books, fiction, verse, and fables for children as well as novels, poetry, and nonfiction for adults, Randolph Caldecott is the creator of works that are often considered the first modern picture books. Recognized as an artistic genius who brought creativity, technical skill, and a new professional quality to the genre of juvenile literature, Caldecott is best known for creating sixteen picture books that feature traditional nursery rhymes and songs and eightee nth-century comic poems. They are illustrated with economical yet lively pictures in sepia line and watercolor. These books, which include texts by such authors as Oliver Goldsmith, William Cowper, and Edwin Waugh as well as those from familiar sources such as Mother Goose, depict classic rhymes such as "Hey Diddle Diddle," "The Queen of Hearts," "Sing a Song for Sixpence," and "The House that Jack Built"; songs such as "A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go" and "The Milkmaid"; and humorous verses such as The Diverting History of John Gilpin and The Three Jovial Huntsmen. In his illustrations, Caldecott introduced the technique of animation-the effect of continuous movement that takes the eye from page to page-to the picture book. His illustrations are lauded for expressing Caldecott's insight into human nature as well as for including the humor, action, and detail that appeals to children.

Born in Chester, England, in the county of Cheshire, on March 22, 1846, Caldecott was interested in animals, sports, and drawing from an early age. By the age of six, he had become an avid sketcher. Caldecott attended the prestigious King Henry VIII School, where he became head boy. He also continued his artistic endeavors-drawing from nature, carving wooden animals, modeling from clay, and painting. Although he had a fairly idyllic childhood, Caldecott nearly died from rheumatic fever. After his illness, Caldecott's health was to remain precarious for the rest of his life. When he was fifteen, Caldecott's father-who did not encourage his son's interests-arranged for him to work in a bank in rural Shropshire. In his free time, Caldecott hunted and fished and attended markets and local fairs, sketchbook in hand. In 1867, he transferred to a bank in Manchester. Colleagues at the bank later recalled finding his drawings of dogs and horses on the backs of receipts and old envelopes. Caldecott joined the Brasenose Club-an exclusive gentlemen's club for literary, scientific, and artistic pursuits-and became an evening student at the Manchester School of Art. The next year, his first drawings were published in local newspapers and humorous periodicals. In 1870, Caldecott went to London, where his portfolio was received favorably. In 1872, he moved there permanently to become a freelance illustrator. That summer, he accompanied author Henry Blackburn, later to become his biographer, to the Harz Mountains in Germany. Caldecott's drawings were gathered the next year and published in Blackburns's The Harz Mountains: A Town in the Toy Country.

In 1875, Caldecott provided the illustrations for his first children's book, Louisa Morgan's Baron Bruno; or, The Unbelieving Philosopher, and Other Fairy Stories, as well as for Old Christmas, a collection of Yuletide stories by American author Washington Irving. Two years later, his pictures graced another work by Irving, Bracebridge Hall, which is often thought to have cemented Caldecott's reputation as an illustrator. It also led to his association with Edmund Evans, a successful printer and engraver who had been publishing children's books illustrated by Walter Crane, one of England's best known artists, for twelve years. When Crane retired from the partnership, Evans invited Caldecott to continue in his place. Caldecott agreed to produce two picture books a year; these titles, published from 1878 to 1885, were to become his most acclaimed works. Through Evans, Caldecott became the first artist to be able to distribute his illustrations internationally. Since their initial publication, Caldecott's picture books have been issued in a variety of formats: in a single volume, in two collections of eight titles apiece, in four collections of two titles apiece, and in miniature editions.

In 1879, Caldecott moved to a country home in Kent and was elected a member of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts. In 1880, he married Marion Brind. Although Caldecott loved children and often played with Walter Crane's, the couple remained childless. In 1882, Caldecott moved to Broomfield, Surrey, and entered into a successful collaboration with the children's writer Juliana Horatia Ewing, for whom he illustrated three books. He also continued to submit illustrations to periodicals, including Punch, the Graphic, and the Illustrated London News. In 1883, he illustrated Aesop's Fables, with text written by his brother Alfred. In 1885, he provided the pictures for a collection of fairy tales by the French fabulist, Jean de la Fontaine. Sent to the United States to draw sketches for the Graphic, Caldecott suffered an attack of acute gastritis in St. Augustine, Florida. He died on February 12, 1886, just before his 40th birthday. Prior to his death, Caldecott wrote, "Please say that my line is to make smile the lunatic who has shown no sign of mirth for many months."

Caldecott's Illustrations

Caldecott is considered an exceptional artist whose illustrations reflect his originality and intelligence. Michael Scott Joseph of the Dictionary of Literary Biography has noted, "In Caldecott's work the illustrator becomes an equal with the author…," while William Feaver of the Times Literary Supplement commented, "A brilliant combination of free drawing … and tonal restraint … gave his work a spontaneous yet age-old character." Considered a quintessentially English artist, Caldecott characteristically illustrated his picture books with bucolic scenes of local country life. Generally setting his pictures in the England of a century before, Caldecott accurately depicted people, animals, and typography while investing his works with sly wit and a strong sense of the richness and color of everyday living. The artist, who is often noted for the narrative quality of his pictures, created a style of pictorial storytelling by using subplots in his illustrations to enhance the meaning of the texts. Caldecott studied what he called the "art of leaving out as a science" and once wrote that "the fewer the lines, the less error committed." In his works, the artist uses a deceptively simple style to capture the essence of a subject with a minimum of lines, and he is often credited for his ability to illustrate a story completely while expanding its dimensions in just a few strokes. Caldecott's pictures, drawn with a brush used as a pen, appeared as both small line drawings and large double-page spreads. He is often acknowledged for the fluidity of his style, for the vitality of his renderings, for the beauty and accuracy of his backgrounds, and for his skill in depicting animals-especially dogs, horses, geese, and pigs-and facial expressions.

Caldecott's Themes

Although Caldecott's books are filled with gaiety, they do not shy away from harsh realities. His illustrations depict sickness and death, both of humans and animals. In addition, Caldecott includes surprising, often shocking, revelations in his drawings and paintings. One of his most famous pictures accompanies the nursery rhyme "Baby Bunting." Caldecott shows a tiny child walking outdoors with its mother in a suit made of rabbit skins, including the ears. The artist captures the moment when Baby Bunting confronts a group of rabbits. As author/illustrator Maurice Sendak noted in his introduction to The Randolph Caldecott Treasury, "Baby is staring with the most perplexed look at those rabbits, as though with the dawning of knowledge that the lovely, cuddly, warm costume he's wrapped up in has come from those creatures." Sendak concluded that Baby Bunting's expression seems to query, "Does something have to die to dress me?" In the well known closing illustrations for Hey Diddle Diddle, Caldecott shows the anthropomorphized Dish happily running away with the Spoon; however, the final picture takes an unexpected turn: the Dish has been broken into ten pieces, and the Spoon is being taken away by her angry parents, a Fork and a Knife. However, most of Caldecott's illustrated tales and rhymes are filled with robust, rollicking activity and are underscored by the artist's celebratory approach to life.

Critical Reception

A member, along with Walter Crane and Kate Green-away, of the triumvirate of English artists known as the "Academicians of the Nursery," Caldecott is usually considered the greatest of the three. Admired by Van Gogh and Gaughin as well as by children's artists such as Beatrix Potter and Marcia Brown, he is praised for the variety and range of his talents. Caldecott's picture books are often thought to be a perfect blend of art, text, and design. Popular during his lifetime, his works became extremely i nfluential after this death, and his style can be seen in the works of such artists as Hugh Thomson, L. Leslie Brooke, and Edward Ardizzone. In 1924, his drawing of "The Three Jovial Huntsmen"-taken from the book of the same name published in 1880-became the logo for the children's literature reviewing source the Horn Book Magazine, and in 1938 the American Library Association instituted the Caldecott Medal, an award presented to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book published each year. Although Caldecott's popularity is thought to have diminished in recent years due to changing tastes, his reputation is still stellar: most critics acknowledge that his books have timeless appeal and are among the best ever created for children.

Reviewers in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been almost unanimously favorable in their assessment of Caldecott's work. In 1881, W. E. Henley of the Art Journal wrote that he "is a kind of Good Genius of the Nursery, and-in the way of pictures-the most beneficent and delightful it ever had. … Under his sway Art for the nursery has become Art indeed." The next year, artist Kate Greenaway, herself a popular and respected illustrator, wrote of Caldecott in a letter, "I wish I had such a mind." In 1930, Jacqueline Overton, writing in Contemporary Illustrators of Children's Books, commented, "There has never been any picture book like those of Caldecott's, before or since." Beatrix Potter, an artist whose stature is considered near or equal to Caldecott's, commented in a letter in 1942, "I have the greatest admiration for his work-a jealous appreciation. … He was one of the greatest illustrators of all." Four years later, Mary Gould Davis wrote a biography of Caldecott in which she concluded, "As long as books exist and there are children to enjoy them, boys and girls-and their elders-will turn the pages of the Caldecott picture books." Perhaps Caldecott's most vocal supporter is Maurice Sendak. In 1965, he wrote of Caldecott in Book World, "[N]o artist since has matched his accomplishments.… His picture books … should be among the first volumes given to every child." Thirteen years later, Sendak stated in his introduction to The Randolph Caldecott Treasury, "When I came to picture books, it was Randolph Caldecott who really put me where I wanted to be"; the artist concluded, "Caldecott did it best, much better than anyone who ever lived."

Further Reading

Beatrix Potter's Americans: Selected Letters, edited by Jane Crowell Morse, Horn Book, 1982.

Blackburn, Henry, Randolph Caldecott: A Personal Memoir of His Early Art Career, Sampson Low, 1886; reprint by Singing Tree Press, 1969.

Children's Books and Their Creators, edited by Anita Silvey, Houghton, 1995, pp. 113-14.

Children's Literature Review, Volume 34, Gale, 1988.

Contemporary Illustrators of Children's Books, edited by Bertha E. Mahony and Elinor Whitney, 1930; reprint by Gale Research, 1978.

Davis, Mary Gould, Randolph Caldecott, 1846-1886: An Appreciation, Lippincott, 1946.

Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Children's Writers, 1800-1880, Volume 163, Gale, 1996, pp. 37-47.

The Randolph Caldecott Treasury, Warne, 1978.

Something about the Author, Volume 17, Gale, pp. 31-39.

Spielman, M.H. and G.S. Layard. Kate Greenaway, Putnam, 1905.

The Art Journal, 1881, pp. 208-12.

Book World-The Sunday Herald Tribune, October 31, 1965, pp. 5, 38.

Times Literary Supplement, January 21, 1977, p. 64.

Caldecott, Randolph (1846–86), English children's book illustrator, whose drawings and illustrations are considered among the best of 19th‐century art for children in England. They had a tremendous influence on contemporary artists and crucially formed the work of Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway. Idyllic representations of nature and rural life, his work includes many single‐sheet illustrations of nursery rhymes such as ‘Hey diddle diddle’, ‘Bye baby bunting’, ‘The fox jumps over the parson's gate’, and ‘A frog he would a‐wooing go’, as well as Babes in the Wood (1879), Sing a Song for Sixpence (1880), and Aesop's Fables (1883).

— Karen Seago

Illustration for "The House that Jack Built", from The complete collection of pictures & songs, published 1887. Digitally restored.

Randolph Caldecott (22 March 1846 – 12 February 1886) was a British artist and illustrator, born in Chester. He was the eponym of the Caldecott Medal.

He exercised his art chiefly in book illustrations. His abilities as an artist were promptly and generously recognized by the Royal Academy.

Caldecott greatly influenced illustration of children's books during the nineteenth century. Two books illustrated by him, priced at a shilling each, were published each Christmas for eight years.

Caldecott's output, however, ranged wider than this: he illustrated novels and accounts of foreign travel, made humorous drawings depicting hunting and fashionable life, drew cartoons and he made sketches of the famous Parliament inside and out, and exhibited sculptures and paintings in oil and watercolour in the Royal Academy and galleries.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Manchester 3 London 4 Marriage 5 Death 6 Appreciation 7 External links 8 Further reading

Early life

Caldecott was born at 150 Bridge Street (now No 16), Chester, where today there is a plaque to commemorate him. His father, John Caldecott, was a Chester businessman and an accountant of some note who was married twice and had 13 children. Caldecott was his third child by his first wife Mary Dinah (née Brookes). In 1848 the family moved to Challoner House, Crook Street and in 1860 to 23 Richmond Place at Boughton just outside Chester. He spent the last five years of his schooling at The King's School which, in those days, was in the cathedral buildings in the centre of the city. In his early childhood Caldecott drew and modelled, mostly animals, and he continued drawing for the rest of his life. There is a small oil painting in Chester of his brother Alfred painted during his school days.

On leaving school at the age of fifteen, Caldecott went to work at the Whitchurch branch of the Whitchurch & Ellesmere Bank and took lodgings at Wirswall, a village near the town. In his spare time and when he was out visiting clients he was often to be seen walking and riding around the countryside; many of his later illustrations incorporate buildings and scenery of that part of Cheshire. His love of riding led him to take up hunting and his experiences in the hunting field and his love of animals bore fruit over the years in the masses of drawings and sketches of hunting scenes, many of them humorous. In the year that he left school, 1861, he first had a drawing published: it was a sketch of a disastrous fire at the Queen Railway Hotel in Chester and it appeared in the Illustrated London News together with his account of the blaze.

Manchester

Cover of Babes in the Wood, illustrated by Caldecott

'The lasses held the stakes - illustration by Randolph Caldecott from Come Lasses and Lads

After six years at Whitchurch, Caldecott moved to the head office in Manchester of the Manchester & Salford Bank. He lodged variously in Aberdeen Street, Rusholme Grove and at Bowdon. He took the opportunity to study at night school at the Manchester School of Art and practised continually, with success in local papers and some London publications. It was a habit of his at this time, which he maintained all his life, to decorate his letters, papers and documents of all descriptions with marginal sketches to illustrate the content or provide amusement. A number of his letters have been reprinted with their illustrations in Yours Pictorially, a book edited by Michael Hutchings. In 1870, through a friend in London, the painter Thomas Armstrong, Randolph was put in touch with Henry Blackburn the editor of London Society, who published a number of his drawings in several issues of the monthly magazine.

London

Encouraged by this evidence of his ability to support himself by his art, Caldecott decided to quit his job and move to London; this he did in 1872 at the age of 26. Within two years he had become a successful magazine illustrator working on commission. His work included individual sketches, illustrations of other articles and a series of illustrations of a holiday which he and Henry Blackburn took in the Harz Mountains in Germany. The latter became the first of a number of such series. He remained in London for seven years, spending most of them in lodgings at 46 Great Russell Street just opposite the British Museum, in the heart of Bloomsbury. While there he met and made friends (as he did very readily) with many artistic and literary people, among them Dante Gabriel Rossetti, George du Maurier (who was a fellow contributor to Punch), John Everett Millais and Frederic Leighton. His friendship with Frederic (later Lord) Leighton led to a commission to design peacock capitals for four columns in the Arab room at Leighton's rather exotic home, Leighton House in Kensington. (Walter Crane designed a tiled peacock frieze for the same room.)

In 1869 Caldecott had a picture hung in the Royal Manchester Institute. He had a picture hung in the Royal Academy for the first time in 1876. He was also a water colourist and was elected to the Royal Institute of Watercolour Painting in 1872.

In 1877 Edmund Evans, who was a colour printer and talented engraver, lost the services of Walter Crane as his children's book illustrator and asked Caldecott to do illustrations for two books for Christmas. The results were The House that Jack Built and The Diverting History of John Gilpin, published in 1878. They were an immediate success; so much so that he produced two more each year until he died. The stories and rhymes were all of Caldecott's choosing and in some cases were written or added to by himself. In another milieu Caldecott followed The Harz Mountains with illustrations for two books of Washington Irving's, three for Juliana Ewing, another of Henry Blackburn's, one for Captain Frederick Marryat and for other authors. Among well known admirers of his work were Gauguin and Van Gogh.

Randolph continued to travel, partly for the sake of his health, and to make drawings of the people and surroundings of the places he visited; these drawings were accompanied by humorous and witty captions and narrative.

Marriage

In 1879 he moved to Wybornes, a house which he took (it is not known whether he bought or rented it) near Kemsing in Kent. It is there that he became engaged to Marian Brind, who lived at Chelsfield about seven miles away. They were married in 1880 and lived at Wybornes for the next two years. There were no children of the marriage. In the autumn of 1882 the Caldecotts left Kent and bought a house, Broomfield, at Frensham in Surrey; they also rented No 24 Holland Street, Kensington. By 1884, sales of Caldecott's Nursery Rhymes had reached 867,000 copies (of twelve books) and he was internationally famous.

Death

However, his health was generally very poor and he suffered much from gastritis and a heart condition going back to an illness in his childhood. It was his health among other things which prompted his many winter trips to the Mediterranean and other warm climates. It was on such a tour in the United States of America in 1886 that he was taken ill again and succumbed. He and Marian had sailed to New York and travelled down the East Coast; they reached Florida in an unusually cold February; Randolph was taken ill and died at St. Augustine. He was not quite 40 years old. A headstone still marks his grave in the cemetery there.

Soon after his early death, his many friends contributed to a memorial to him which was designed by Sir Alfred Gilbert. It was placed in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral, London.

There is also a memorial to him in Chester Cathedral.

Appreciation

Gleeson White wrote of Caldecott:

"Caldecott was a fine literary artist, who was able to express himself with rare facility in pictures in place of words, so that his comments upon a simple text reveal endless subtleties of thought.... You have but to turn to any of his toy-books to see that at times each word, almost each syllable, inspired its own picture.... He studied his subject as no one else ever studied it.... Then he portrayed it simply and with inimitable vigor, with a fine economy of line and colour; when colour is added, it is mainly as a gay convention, and not closely imitative of nature."

In his Prophets Priests and Kings (London: Alston Rivers, 1908, p. 327), A. G. Gardiner, editor of the Daily News, showed his appreciation of the importance of Caldecott's illustrations when he quoted a short poem that G. K. Chesterton had inscribed in "a book of Caldecott's pictures to a little friend of mine—"

This is the sort of book we like

(For you and I are very small),

With pictures stuck in anyhow,

And hardly any words at all.

. . .

You will not understand a word

Of all the words, including mine;

Never you trouble; you can see,

And all directness is divine—

Stand up and keep your childishness:

Read all the pedants’ screeds and strictures;

But don’t believe in anything

That can’t be told in coloured pictures.

External links

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Caldecott, Randolph.

Online collections

• Works by Randolph Caldecott at Internet Archive (color illustrated scanned books).
• Works by Randolph Caldecott at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML illustrated)
• Works by Randolph Caldecott at the University of Florida's "Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature" (color illustrated scanned books).

Misc

• Randolph Caldecott Society of America
• Randolph Caldecott Society UK

Further reading

Engen, Rodney K. (1988) Randolph Caldecott: Lord of the Nursery, London: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN 1870630459

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)