American Illustration

Bluebeard, 1871 Kate Greenaway (1846-1901) Watercolor on paper, 8 ¾ x 6 ¼ inches Louisa du Pont Copeland Memorial Fund, 2006

The Delaware Art Museum recently purchased a watercolor by the English illustrative artist Kate Greenaway. The illustration will be featured in the new re-installation of the Museum’s Pre-Raphaelite Collection.

The daughter of an engraver and a dress maker, Greenaway exhibited a talent for drawing when quite young. In 1865, she enrolled in the Women’s section of the National Art Training School in South Kensington. In 1871, she began taking classes at the Slade School, under the direction of the Royal Academician and friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, Edward Poynter. (The Museum owns Poynter’s In a Garden, 1891). It was during this period that she received one of her first commissions, to illustrate nine fairy tales, published in 1871 as Madame d’Aulnoy’s Fairy Tales.

As is endemic of many fairy tales, the story of Bluebeard is a bit violent for the youthful audience to whom it was directed. A wealthy aristocrat, Bluebeard is feared for his unusually ferocious behavior and the unexplainable fact that, although he has been married several times, his wives seem to have disappeared. The tale begins shortly after the protagonist has married once again. In preparation for a trip, Bluebeard gives his new bride the keys to the castle, including one which opens a mysterious room which he forbids her to enter. In her husband’s absence, curiosity gets the best of her and she enters the room, only to find the murdered bodies of all of her husband’s previous wives. Upon his return, Bluebeard learns of his wife’s betrayal and threatens her with her life. She is saved at the ninth hour when her two brothers come to her rescue.

With great diplomacy, Greenaway has chosen a moment of relative calm in the story, illustrating the scene when Bluebeard hands the keys to his wife before setting out on his trip. This drawing is not representative of the cheerful domestic subjects executed in strong outline and pastel colors for which Greenaway is best known. Here, instead, the linearity is muted and the psychological relationship between the two figures is heightened.