Customer Reviews

Rackham's Color Illustrations for Wagner's "Ring"

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These are fantastic illustrations.

C.S. Lewis stumbled upon these Arthur Rackham paintings for Richard Wagner's, "Der Ring Des Nibelungen". Lewis writes in "Suprised By Joy" how the pictures inspired a Mythical sensation of 'Northerness' in his young mind.

As a child, 16-years ago, I discovered the same books and Arthur Rackham illustrations at the local library. I was enchanted! They led me explore the worlds of Wagnerian Opera.

I'm really glad the pictures are now reproduced in this paperback book. Pure Magic!

If you're new to Arthur Rackham's illustrations, these are PERFECT to start with.

"Yo-Jo-To-Ho!!!" -Die Walkurie

Rackham's skill at personifying nature is shown once more. Although not a book for children due to its graphic nature, the flowing lines and colors tell more than a thousand words. If a Rackham fan, a must have.

I bought this book after I bought the Met's dvd of the Ring and fell in love with Norse sagas. Rackham brings that old world feel with all the knarls, worts and all. Wagner's music inspies perhaps the most powerful images of man: lust, power, love, sin and redemption; Rackham's watercolors are faithful to this and help amplfiy the opera.

This book is a delight for anybody who loves Richard Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" ("The Nibelung's Ring") operatic tetralogy. While I could have wished for just a little more detail in the captions - which could therefore have allowed the entire story of this cycle to be told (a few things consequently get missed - not really major, but wouldn't have hurt nevertheless!) - they are otherwise excellent; and the paintings themselves are not only outstanding art-pieces in themselves - they also are excellent visualisations of what Wagner was trying to do! They're also a wonderful corrective to the all-too-many "modernisations" that for some people like myself are hurting the visual aspect of a given opera's appreciation. [Often those "modernisations" are in bad taste, travesties of the composers' and librettists' intentions, and are either boring, shocking for mere shock value, or just plain BAD!!!!!]

Most warmly recommended for both confirmed Rackham lovers as well as Wagner lovers AND for those who're just getting started with the process of getting to know Wagner's stupendous cycle!!! GET IT!!!!

All 64 Rackham's images for Wagner's Ring collected in one book is a grate thing to have if a Rackham lover. Reproduction of the images is not the best possible though. All in all, it is still a good book to have. Rackham is magical.

Arthur Rackham is among the greatest illustrators of what has come to be called 'fantasy' literature. His renderings of scenes from Dickens, Barrie, Grahame, and even Shakespeare are often flawless and many have ultimately proved definitive.

Here he tackles the daunting scope of Richard Wagner's vast operatic cycle DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN, and he is so successful that his images have become the model for most of its traditional stage design ever since they were exhibited in 1912 at the Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris. Yet Rackham achieves more than merely the giving of face and form to Wagner's characters and scenes. These illustrations capture a sense of space and height, light and darkness, beauty and tragedy, promise and doom which may be described as music to the eyes. C.S. Lewis first beheld them as a boy and later wrote, 'Pure "Northerness" engulfed me: a vision of huge, clear spaces hanging above the Atlantic in the endless twilight of Northern summer, remoteness, severity ...'

For me, the most evocative image in this collection is from DIE WALKURE, Act II. In the foreground we see Brunnhilde anguishing over her orders from the just-departed Wotan. Helmet cast upon the ground, her face and posture effectively communicate distress and isolation; yet most remarkable is how Rackham echoes the Valkyrie's state of mind in the landscape beyond her. The falling hillside; the stark, scraggly saplings scattered into the distance; the shadowy silhouette of other mountains marking the far horizon; the low-hanging clouds; and the muted shades of grey, gold, and brown all convey an overwhelming sense of loneliness as cold and haunted as it is beautiful.

I have known these illustrations for years and always thought that Rackham really captures the far-away land of Norse that Wagner had in mind. The drawings capture the emotions of the characters very well, especially the ones of Brunnhilde. I find the ones of the Rhinemaidens to be absolutely beautiful and really beyond what any stage producer can capture on stage. The illustrations in this volume look to be well reproduced and are on durable paper. They were originally published in 1910/11 and have just come into the public domain in the US; the full collection of 65 or so can be seen on Wikipedia Commons.

I'm swiftly becoming enamored of the old-time illustrators - Joseph Clement Coll, Charles Dana Gibson, N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, and Alphonse Mucha to name but a few. I'm now happy to add Arthur Rackham to that list. As both a fan of illustration (fantasy, comic book, and otherwise), as well as a bit of a mythology buff, I was thrilled to see that Dover (whose name, in my opinion, always spells quality) had produced a volume of Rackham's illustrations of Wagner's Ring Cycle, which is itself based on a famed tale of Norse mythology. The illustrations, as the book notes, were first published in 1910 and 1911, respectively. They are uniformly beautiful, bringing the story to vibrant life. Rackham was clearly a skilled draftsman, and his work has that turn-of-the-century look that is very compelling (Gibson and Wyeth had a similar style).

This book is printed on high-quality glossy paper and features wonderful illustrations of dwarves, heroes, valkyrie, gods, and others that Rackham captures with skill and aplomb. Each drawing is accompanied by a discription, helping to tie the illustrations together and explain the plot to those who might not be familiar with it.While the volume is quite slim (only 64 pages, plus 4 of introductor/background material) it is very much worthwhile. I hope you will pick it up and enjoy it.

Nice collection of hard-to-find Rackham images, but not the best color reproduction. Still a good book for the Rackham enthusiast.

Although not as fantastical as many of Rackhams other illustrations,
and with atypically pedestrian compostitions, there _are plenty_
of images full of his mystery. Final word: if you are just starting to
look at Rackham, leave 'Ring' for later.