I am trying to find a book I had as a child in the 80s. I can neither remember the title nor the plot nor any characters. All I can remember is an image: a girl/woman in a purple cloak on the right hand side of the book. The purple cloak may have been a dress. It was close to fuschia. In the illustration it was snowing. The colors used were rich & deep. the cloak curved out to the right & the figure was walking to the left. I have found a few images that are very similar, which I am including below. I am fairly certain the artist was either Arthur Rackham or Warwick Goble. I hesitated over the first image, thinking it might have actually been what I remembered, & perhaps it is but the intensity of color faded over time?
The colours may not be saturated enough, and the dress is more blue than purple, however Rackham’s illustration of ‘Gerda’ (Snow Queen) has the billow, the placement, and the snow…?
https://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Arthur-Rackham/Gerda-Is-Terrified-By-The-Snow-Queens-Advance-Guard-But-She-Said-Our-Father-Illustration-From-The-Snow-Queen-By-Hans-Christian-Andersen-Published-1932.html
thanks so much for your response! it isn’t that one. i was thinking that i might be wrong about rackham/goble. what if it was a russian children’s book? it had the feeling of being russian, or romani. that means it may have been much later, actually 80s or not so long before.
Is it possibly The Ordinary Princess by M.M. Kaye? The cover of Puffin edition from the early 80s has a girl in a light purple dress on the right hand side. There’s no snow but there is blossom on a low branch behind her. The illustrator is Faith Jaques but there a touch of Rackham’s style in the lines I think.
Actually, regarding my previous comment , the illustrator for the front cover was M.M. Kaye herself, Faith Jaques did the illustrations inside.
not the one, sadly. i was also looking at mercer mayer’s east of the sun west of the moon, or another similarly illustrated.
There is an edition of George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind, illustrated by Harvey Dinnerstein, that has cover art elements similar to your first picture. If that’s not it, it may be worth looking at images from other editions, as the flowing figure of the wind’s hair is in many of them.
also, not quite. the more i look at the image of little
red riding hood the more i realize that what i’m looking for most resembles that in terms of color, hue.
at https://artvee.com/books/stories-from-the-pentamerone/ are all 32 of the illustrations from the pentamerone & none of them is the one i’m looking for. these figures are all kind of, uh, skinny, & in the image i’m looking for the figure(s) were sort of short, plump. what if it was just some random children’s book from the 80s that nobody’s ever heard of?
the illustrations remind me of a book called The Snow Queen and other Stories. Several very weird stories in there besides the Snow Queen story.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/706851.The_Snow_Queen_and_Other_Tales
This is a 1981 re-issue
hi kathy. when i read your message the snow queen sounded familiar. i was able to find the complete text of the book you referenced on archive.org, but that isn’t the one. it did lead me to a bunch of anton pieck illustrations, & those look so much like the image i hold in my head.
Alas, I can only confirm that the top illustration is Arthur Rackham and the bottom is Warwick Goble, as you posted. I’ve looked in the (too) many Arthur Rackham books that I own and though both illustrations look familiar, I didn’t find either of them. There’s a book called “Cinderella & Other Classic Italian Fairy Tales” – drawings by Rackham and color illustrations by Goble, so there must be another book of fairy tales out there illustrated by both men. Good luck!
thank you for your response! i appreciate your efforts very much. i have just looked through a slew of images that resulted from searching cinderella & other classic italian fairy tales along with both artists’ names. everything looks so similar & yet none of the images are what i’m looking for. now when i look at the work of these artists i’m thinking that the book i remember was probably illustrated by someone heavily influenced by rackham & goble.