Appreciation
Gleeson White wrote of Caldecott:
Caldecott was a fine literary artist, who was able to express himself with rare facility in pictures in place of words, so that his comments upon a simple text reveal endless subtleties of thought ... You have but to turn to any of his toy-books to see that at times each word, almost each syllable, inspired its own picture ... He studied his subject as no one else ever studied it ... Then he portrayed it simply and with inimitable vigor, with a fine economy of line and colour; when colour is added, it is mainly as a gay convention, and not closely imitative of nature.G. K. Chesterton wrote in a Caldecott picture book that he presented to a young friend:
- This is the sort of book we like
- (For you and I are very small),
- With pictures stuck in anyhow,
- And hardly any words at all.
- . . .
- You will not understand a word
- Of all the words, including mine;
- Never you trouble; you can see,
- And all directness is divine—
- Stand up and keep your childishness:
- Read all the pedants’ screeds and strictures;
- But don’t believe in anything
- That can’t be told in coloured pictures.
For Maurice Sendak "Caldecott's work heralds the beginning of the modern picture book. He devised an ingenious juxtaposition of picture and word, a counterpoint that never happened before. Words are left out—but the picture says it. Pictures are left out—but the word says it." Sendak also appreciated the subtle darkness of Caldecott's work: "You can't say it's a tragedy, but something hurts. Like a shadow passing quickly over. It is this which gives a Caldecott book—however frothy the verses and pictures—its unexpected depth."
Read more about this topic: Randolph Caldecott
Famous quotes containing the word appreciation:
“The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“The wonderful scope and variety of female loveliness, if too long suffered to sway us without decision, shall finally confound all power of selection. The confirmed bachelor is, in America, at least, quite as often the victim of a too profound appreciation of the infinite charmingness of woman, as made solitary for life by the legitimate empire of a cold and tasteless temperament.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals. I know of no book that has so few readers. There is none so truly strange, and heretical, and unpopular. To Christians, no less than Greeks and Jews, it is foolishness and a stumbling-block.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)