Art History Browser \ Galleries \ Illustration

An illustration is a visualization such as a drawing that stresses subject more than form. The aim of an illustration is to elucidate or decorate. The "Golden Age" of illustration in Europe and America took place in the late 1800s as mass market magazines, and illustrated books had become the dominant media of public consumption. Under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite painters and emulations of hand-printing techniques by the design-oriented Arts and Crafts Movement, americans such as Edmund Dulac, Arthur Rackham, Walter Crane and N.C. Wyeth created works which often carried an ethos of neo-mediaevalism and took mythological, fairy-tale or adventure story subjects.   continue on wikipedia »