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Wild 9 artwork7/3/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() He also read widely – he especially loved Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson and John Keats – and as he worked he played music in the background, choosing songs and albums that reflected his creative moods. You can see the influence of Swiss painter Henry Fuseli on “ Outside Over There” and the influences of British caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson and Czech painter Josef Lada on the recently published “ Presto and Zesto in Limboland,” which Sendak created with friend and collaborator Arthur Yorinks. “Wild Things,” for example, owes a great deal to the influence of French post-impressionist painter Henri Rousseau. He was always seeking out inspiration from other artists whom he admired. Unlike illustrators who use a singular style that appears throughout their work, Sendak developed a unique visual approach for each project. Yet most picture book authors and illustrators work diligently and juggle multiple projects. He also published his own picture books during this period, from “ Kenny’s Window” in 1956 to “ The Sign on Rosie’s Door” in 1960. Sendak illustrated other picture books for his publisher, Harper and Row, and collaborated with Else Holmelund Minarik on her “Little Bear” series and with Ruth Krauss on books like “ I Want to Paint my Bathroom Blue.” Much of the time was spent focusing on other projects. Curiosity and creationīut what happened during the preceding eight years? “I had never seen fantasy depicted in American children’s books in illustrations that were so powerfully in motion,” critic Nat Hentoff wrote in the New Yorker in 1966, a few years after the book’s publication. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Library. Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. The changing borders – think of the page in which the trees take over Max’s bedroom – compel the reader to turn the pages.ĭummy for Where the Wild Things Are (1963), 26:9, The Maurice Sendak Collection. Appearing eight years after the first dummy, this one, square and slightly larger than the first, shows the evolution of the book’s characters and visual rhythm. The wild things do appear in his other surviving book dummy, which is entirely recognizable as an early stage of the finished book we now know. In fact, in 1955 he handily illustrated “ Charlotte and The White Horse,” a children’s book authored by Ruth Krauss, with whom he had a longstanding collaborative relationship.īut Sendak must have decided horses weren’t right for this story, and he took time to let his ideas percolate. So if he wanted to illustrate horses, he probably would have. ![]() But Sendak spent his life immersing himself in a variety of art styles, from romantic painters William Blake and Domenico Tiepolo to American cartoonist Winsor McCay. In interviews, Sendak claimed that, when revising the story, he gave up on horses because he couldn’t draw them. Dummy for ‘Where the Wild Horses Are’ (1955), 26:9, The Maurice Sendak Collection. ![]()
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