Margaret Tarrant
Tarrant, Margaret (1888–1959), British illustrator noted for her innovative work for the Medici Society in the 1920s. Her colour illustrations accompanied Marion Webb's poems about unusual fairies such as insects and wild fruits. Altogether 13 little books, about 10 by 13 cm. (4 by 5 inches), were produced from 1917 to 1929. They featured glued‐in watercolour illustrations with decorative and varied borders surrounding the illustration. Tarrant dressed her fairies in varied garb. For instance, the caterpillar in The Insect Fairies sported a sunshade, veil, bag, purse, and sailor's hat, and carried a seaside spade and pail.
Born in Battersea, London, Tarrant studied at the Clapham School of Art and later at Heatherley's School of Art. In 1935 she took another course at the Guildford School of Art. She began her career by designing cards and calendars, gaining her first commission in 1908 for Charles Kingsley's The Water‐Babies. In 1910 she illustrated both Fairy Stories from Hans Christian Andersen and Charles Perrault's Contes. She exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Walker Royal Society of Artists. In 1936 she went to Palestine to collect material for her work.
Tarrant produced three editions of Hans Christian Andersen stories, the first in 1917 and the last in 1949 for Ward Lock as part of the Sunshine Series. Altogether in this latter book there are 24 colour plates, some in circle form. In ‘The Swineherd’, she depicts the princess wearing stilts when asking the price of the pipkin, which saves the princess's feet from becoming embedded in the mud.
As an author and editor, Tarrant produced six books beginning with Autumn Gleanings from the Poets in 1910 and concluding with The Margaret Tarrant Story Book, first published in 1947. In the latter, all the stories are either traditional or by women. Her black‐and‐white illustrations are all shaded around the edges, making them softer and filled‐in, while the colour illustrations are watercolours with washes softening the images and making the background slightly blurry, as though the reader were looking into a magical mirror.
Tarrant was considered an accessible and popular illustrator. Her illustrations were naturalistic, sometimes humorous, and warm. Besides illustrating tales by Webb, Andersen, Perrault, as well as her own retellings, she also illustrated fairy‐tale books by Harry Golding (Fairy Tales (1930) among others) and Mary Gann's Dreamland Fairies (1936), which contained 35 original short stories such as ‘House Goblins’ and ‘Garden of Dreams’. The frontispiece of the latter shows a child in a bathrobe and slippers sliding hand‐in‐hand with a fairy down a moonbeam. Like other original work she illustrated, this book was sentimental and often too sweet, but her illustrations never demonstrated that aspect of the text. Instead they conveyed warmth and humour.
In 1978 Ward Lock printed Fairy Tales by Margaret Tarrant which contained six fairy tales accompanied by 18 colour plates. These illustrations showcased Tarrant's innovative talent. For example, the first of her two illustrations for ‘The Three Bears’ depicts mama and papa bear facing baby bear holding his empty porridge bowl, while steam spirals up from theirs. Over this picture is a frieze‐type border showing the three bears approaching a table set with three appropriately sized porridge bowls. The second illustration is a circle outlined in golden bear brown representing little bear hanging on the end of his bed while Goldilocks sleeps in it. Circular shaped pictures appear in ‘The Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Tom Thumb’, and ‘Babes in the Wood’. Borders with additional characters complement the illustrations. The most unusual is keyhole‐shaped in which Beauty bends over the collapsed Beast.
— Louisa Smith
