The Golden Age of the Dragon saddles the Victorian and Edwardian ages. Artists like Arthur Rackham, Frank C. Pape, Kay Nielsen, Edmund Dulac, Maxfield Parrish and Howard Pyle did illustrations of the highest quality for magazines and books. (The Golden Age of Illustration is considered to be 1850 to 1924. The Pulp era begins around 1924, filling pages with an entirely different quality of image.)
Many consider this time period to be the true realm of the fairy story. Andrew Lang was publishing his “fairy books”. Grimm’s, Perrault, Hawthorne, The Arabian Nights, Wagner operas, all manner of folklore and fantastic material saw the beautiful full color plates added to great stories. And among these lurked the dragon. (We’ll do the crisp black & white illos next time!)
But not your Fantasy movie dragon. The idea of Smaug or Eragon or the three dragons from Game of Thrones, or my favorite, Vermithrax, from Dragonslayer (1981) is of a gigantic animal, scaly beast with wings and horns and claws. That is a dragon after all. But the Victorians/Edwardians offered more variety, as well as a more delicate creature sometimes. I don’t just mean the effeminate dragon from Disney’s The Relucant Dragon (1941), designed by Kay Nielsen. There are all varieties. Kindly, terrifying and just plain weird.
Arthur Rackham (1867-1939)
Rackham was the most prolific of dragon painters. He did the tales of Sigurd as well as mythological dragons of other cultures.
Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966)
Parrish didn’t do many monsters. He was more of a landscape creator. But he did do this classic drake for Kenneth Grahame’s “The Reluctant Dragon”.
Warwick Goble (1862-1943)
Goble was a British illustrator. Many of these painters are American, though Goble, Pape and Dulac worked in the UK.
N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945)
N. C. Wyeth is probably the most famous of all these painters, going on to illustrate many classic books. But he did a few dragons too.
Edmund Dulac (1882-1953)
Dulac was a French painter who lived in England. His style is often considered the epitome of the Golden Age. His delicate lines, vibrant colors and composition are classical but not in a stiff way. What do you expect from a guy who has the same name as Lancelot?
Howard Pyle (1853-1911)
Pyle was the man who taught all the others in the Brandywine School. It was Pyle who insisted on costumes for more authentic images. He also wrote classic books about King Arthur and Robin Hood that he illustrated.
Frank C. Pape (1878-1972)
Kay Nielsen (1886-1957)
Nielsen was a Danish artist who went to work for Disney on Fantasia. He did work on The Reluctant Dragon as well design work for The Little Mermaid that didn’t see light until the 1980s.
Milo Winter (1888-1956)
Henry Justice Ford (1861-1940)
Charles Robinson (1870-1937)
Willy Pogany (1882-1955)
As Hollywood got around to dragons (about the same time they got to dinosaurs), the creatures took on a bigger, more standardized look. When Rankin-Bass did their animated version of The Hobbit in 1977, a little of Arthur Rackham’s style leached in and Smaug got a slightly different (I think more Golden Age) look.
