Anne Anderson, illustrator and her fairy tale paintings

The illustration above is from one of dozens versions of famous Canterbury Tales. Considering it was published just after her marriage with Alan Wright (1912) we can presume it was one of their first collaborations.

Anne Anderson and Alan Wright illustrated many books together. He was established painter and illustrator much before her but he lost reputation when he illustrated something he shouldn't (controversial Baron Corvo's story). So he started working again when she started getting commissions.

Their style was very similar (typical Art Deco) and their friends said he generally drew animals and she did the rest of the job.

The result looked something like this:

From the illustration of this less known fairy tale of H. C. Andersen is pretty obvious Anne Anderson did majority of the job in this partnership, so it is only fair to concentrate on her from now on...

As we can see Anne Anderson illustrated many famous classics, including the fairy tales of brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. Here are another two beautiful examples:

Now we will compare one of her earlier works (her first book) with one from times when she was in top demand:

At first look we can say the style of Anne Anderson's painting didn't change much in decades. But this would be wrong.

She loved bright livid colors through all of her life and she adored contrasts. It is easy to notice curves of just about everything, including the lines of objects which should be straight.

But we can also notice the contrasts in later years of her career were not so strong and even color red, one of her favorites at the beginning of her career, wasn't so aggressive anymore.

The illustration on the left is from one of best parodies of the romantic novels ever. It is titled Aucassin and Nicolette and it was probably written in 12th century. The illustration on the right shows similar fluid scene with lady on the run: Cinderella, which is even older.

In both cases faces are drawn with only very limited number of strokes with a brush but we can say the faces on the right are even more expressive despite the fact they are drawn with less moves. Anne Anderson obviously mastered her painting technique and she also moved from more realistic three dimensional paintings to two dimensional which are more favored by children (another famous illustrator Walter Crane wrote several essays on this subject).

This is probably one of Anne Anderson's most famous illustrations. The famous scene from Rapunzel inspired many artists and the illustration on the right, published in 1925.

The Fairy Tales of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm stayed with her for the rest of her life.

She illustrated many Grimms' tales in different editions (sometimes black and white and sometimes in color) and she even rewrote several of them to adapt the stories to the taste of the contemporary audience.

This means we can find different illustrations of the same Grimms' fairy tale in different books, sometimes in very eclectic combinations with very different stories from all over the world.

The next illustrations come from one of these. The book is titled Wonder Book and the stories are Sidi Nouman and The Wind's Tale.

The legacy of Anne Anderson is impressive. She illustrated more than one hundred books altogether!

Most of them were made for children with children in mind and it seems only fair to conclude our case with another masterpiece, this time from book of nursery rhymes:

Old English Nursery Rhymes, Aucassin and Nicolette, The Gateway to Chaucer
Less known and hard to find scans of some illustrations made by Anne Anderson.

Anne Anderson's biography and her work
Biography of Anne Anderson and even more of her illustrations