Once Upon a Blog's Gallery of Enchanted Arts

Here's another resource I only recently found-hopefully you are all aware of the fantastic Once Upon a Blog, which keeps us up to date on all sorts of current fairy tale happenings and entertainment. Gypsy, the Fairy Tale News Hound, also has a fairy tale art tumblr filled with great images, from classic illustrations to modern creations, obscure fairy tales to popular, many of which I've never seen before. This is now included in my link list.

Julie Rouviere's Baba Yaga illustrations

The Gorgonist's Fitcher's Bird

Kay Nielsen's "The Two Brothers", Grimm 

Marianne Stoke's "Frog Prince"

Delicious Design League

Just a sample of what you'll find!

Sybille Schenker's Little Red Riding Hood

Gorgeous laser-cut Little Red Riding Hood book by artist Sybille Schenker! Images from here. Schenker has also released a version of "Hansel and Gretel", which Surlalune featured here.

From the Archives: Lotte Reineger's Adventures of Prince Achmed

Any Disney book will tell you that Snow White was the first full length animated film, but Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed is "considered by many" to be the first full-length animated film. Snow White would undoubtably be the first full-length hand-drawn animated film, but Disney is not meticulous about making this distinction. Reiniger's story is told through enchantingly intricate paper cutouts and premiered in Germany in 1926-beating Snow White by 11 years.

This story is very sexually charged, but as everything is told through silhouettes, it's more subtle. Prince Achmed is the hero, but I hardly think he's more noble than any of the horny villains.


But the film is spellbinding to watch and the music wonderful, if the historical importance weren't reason enough to watch it. And how interesting that fairy tales are so closely linked with the beginnings of animation?


The story is based off of the story of "Prince Achmed and the Fairy" with a little Aladdin thrown in.

Lotte Reiniger has done versions of several fairy tales, including Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Thumbelina, and Jack and the Beanstalk. Portions, if not full versions, of all of these can be found on youtube.


Fun fact: According to wikipedia, the character Prince Achmed in Disney's Aladdin is a tribute to this film (Prince Ali and Ja'far are also other characters from Arabian Nights)

"You were born a street rat, you'll die a street rat, and only your fleas will mourn you!"

Artist Feature: Anna and Elena Balbusso

Enjoy some beautiful artwork by sisters Anna and Elena Balbusso:

Ekaterina and the Firebird

"The Too-clever Fox"

Wild Swans

The Nutcracker

Men Who Wish to Drown

Angela Barrett on her Fairy Tale Illustrations

"I was most inspired by pity for the beast’s awful loneliness and self-disgust. His tragedy is to know all about beauty and how to create it in everything around him, but to miss it in himself." — Angela Barrett, on illustrating Max Eilenberg’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’

Quote found on Meagan Kearney's Beauty and the Beast site. Angela Barrett's illustrations have long been some of my absolute favorite for BATB, inlcuding the Tales of Faerie header image

Retold by Max Eilenberg, it is set, at Barrett's request, in the 1860s - "the period when there was the greatest difference between the male and the female silhouette - men were tall and thin while women's skirts were wider than ever".

Barrett on Snow White:

"I always feel that my happy endings are somehow inadequate. I'm wary of perfect conclusions. I'm always disappointed by the way Jane Austen ties things up so easily at the end ... The truth is, I'm more easily moved by distress. I'm no good at jolly scenes of dancing and merriment - laughter can be so sinister."

"Naomi Lewis's retelling of The Emperor's New Clothes (Walker Books, 2000) gave Barrett a longed-for opportunity to show some very different talents. It's set in 1913, at the end of the belle epoque, in an imaginary kingdom. The drawing is glorious and only an artist with Barrett's knowledge of fashion, and her hands-on experience of dress-making, could give this story such elegant, wickedly funny authenticity. And because "it's such a one-joke story", she has introduced a host of royal dogs, including a pompadoured poodle (himself half-naked) who blushes with embarrassment at the sight of the emperor's pink bottom."

-All other quotes from This Interview on the Guardian

Arthur Rackham's Rare and Revolutionary 1917 Illustrations

I saw this link on Tabled Fables to a brief article on Brain Pickings with the intriguing title: Arthur Rackham's Rare and Revolutionary 1917 Illustrations for the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales, by Maria Popova. Rackham illustrations are some of the most classic and iconic and you've probably seen his beautiful images before, so it's nice to read a little of the history behind the illustrators who helped redefine our mental image of fairy tales.

Rackham first illustrated Grimm fairy tales in 1909, and then "In 1917, amid the thickest darkness of World War I, Rackham returned to the Grimms — those supreme patron saints of the magical inside the macabre. This time, he interpreted the centuries-old tales differently: Where his first edition had been unapologetically violent and grim, the new one radiated what the human spirit most needed amid the hopelessness, destruction, and desecration of the war — beauty, enchantment, charm, hope, even humor."

I wish the article included more examples of this, comparing and contrasting the darker earlier illustrations with the more hopeful later ones. There are lots of illustrations, just not ones that show this concept-most didn't even say which edition they were from.

The article has more on his life and different publications but is a pretty quick read, mostly beautiful images.

Snow White Picture Book Illustrations

Two picture book versions of Snow White with absolutely stunning illustrations-the first by artist Nancy Ekholm Burkert:

And these by Manuel Sumberac and Zdenko Basic:

(More from this book can be viewed here)