Page:Arthur Racham (1922).djvu/16

 to tell when Rackham’s power of draughtsmanship and the individuality of his method and vision first declared themselves, but he soon became known as an artist with a special bent for fantastic subjects, and when he fell in with journalists like the editors of the Pall Mall Budget, he was sent on free-lance errands to execute occasional drawings and sketches at theatres. His great opportunity came when he was commissioned to illustrate Grimm’s Fairy Tales, in 1900. Thereafter his life is a record of popular and artistic successes. Twenty years have passed since he sent some water colour drawings to the exhibition of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colour, and on the strength of their merits he was immediately elected an Associate, although his original art was not in accord with the academic traditions of the English masters. In 1912 he was made an Associate of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts, when a large collection of his works filled a special room of their Salon. He has been frequently honoured with official seals of approval in the shape of medals, and his water colour drawings are exhibited in the art galleries of Paris, Vienna, Barcelona, London and in many English Municipal and Colonial public collections.